


The Archer

by EyesPureStars



Category: Kara Sevda | Endless Love (TV), Kurt Seyit ve Sura, Çarpışma (TV)
Genre: F/M, Heartbreak, Romance, netflix, Çarpışma - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2020-09-27 23:37:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20416196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EyesPureStars/pseuds/EyesPureStars
Summary: Based on the show (available on Netflix) Kurt Seyit ve Şura (Kurt Seyit and Shura), here is a multi chapter story meant to give insight into Seyit's thoughts. Seyit is a Turkish soldier who falls in love with a Russian noble girl. In the backdrop of WWI and the Russian Revolution they must deal with poverty, tragedy, and their own feelings.





	1. Care and Being Cared For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: Hello! This story is based on the show Kurt Seyit ve Şura, (Kurt Seyit and Shura ***Ş is pronounces as "sh" as in "show" ). This story is meant to guide us (me) through Seyit's thoughts, he who is probably the most elusive character in the show as far as what his inner thoughts are. My story is a multiple chapter one, probably less than ten chapters, that might change though. I have posted it on Fictionpress, Fanfiction, and here. I changed a few words for this submission. Thank you for reading and for your support.

_ **Caring and Being Cared For** _

His mother, his sweet mother, with her blessed hands and soft face and tender heart -- would tell him that she was worried for him. For what was a man without a wife? Lonely, she would say. Homeless, she would say. Uneasy! She would point out to him. And worst of all he had no one to care for, no one to take care of him. 

He could never confess his truth to his sweet mother. The truth of his womanizing ways would break her heart. He could never tell her about his adventures as a soldier in the big city. He could never tell her that he had been taken care of by different women in different ways. He could never tell her about the Baroness, how he and the Baroness understood one another and their respective needs. How maybe he was not the marrying type, he did not want to talk about women and give her false hope. The thought of marriage would never cross his or the Baroness's minds, for their relationship was one of pleasure, the kind of pleasure that is brought on by the night. 

* * *

_Alexandra Julianovna Verjenskaya _awoke in him a desire to write poetry, a want to caress her lovely face, a need to give himself to her. He had known passion but he had never known _**love. **Alexandra Julianovna Verjenskaya, _was the girl he wanted to bring home. He would tell his mother that he would not be lonely for he had someone to care for and someone who cared for him. 

The war did not stop, it did not give him pause to do as he planned. The army demanded that he save his feelings for he was to be in the battlefield. His father, his country, his fellow patriots, friends and comrades, demanded that he give all of him when the bullets flew past them at the frontier. Şura, as Alexandra preferred to be called, vowed to wait for him. He wrapped her deep in his heart, underneath his armor, to protect her from harm. 

* * *

It is strange but predictable how much one is shaped by one's environment. Inevitably, what is happening around you, those around you, what you do shapes who you are and the decisions you make. As fate would have it the one woman he wanted to bring home, he would be unable to. 

His father and him had been inseparable, alike in so many ways. Both stubborn, both reeking with endless rage when made angry, both demanded loyalty, both held themselves to the highest standards. Seyit always knew he would serve the Czar as his father had. It was his greatest source of pride, to have followed his father's footsteps and to have excelled as a soldier and army major. However after having witnessed what he had, he did not want his brothers involved in war, he saw his brother's admiration for his military suit, he noticed the excitement on his face when Seyit spoke about the battlefield. But Seyit vowed that Osman, his youngest brother, would not know a battlefield, Osman's life would be a peaceful one. Osman would marry a Turkish girl, perhaps one of the neighbors. He would pick up the mantle at the farm after their father died. 

Did Seyit ever regret being part of the Czar's army? Not once. It gave him his lifelong friends. It brought him to the ball where he had met Şura, his little woman. 

* * *

As stubborn as he was he brought her to Alushta, his hometown, but he knew his father. He brought her as close to his home as he could. He brought her to their guest house, he would talk to his father first. He had never disobeyed his father, he needed to tell him his feelings; Şura was not an adventure he had in Petrograd, she was his destiny. 

As fate would have it, the father and son who shared a loving bond, would with great cruelty severe that bond. Stubborn in their ways, they would not speak. They only destroyed, picked at one another's weaknesses until they ran out of words with which to insult. They were ravishing each other, father against son, their family left to take sides, just like their nation, neighbor fighting against neighbor in an endless war, that demanded the aristocrats' head on a platter. 

But his father always protected him. When the communists, the Red Army, came to hunt down one of the Czar's bravest soldiers, his own son, Kurt Seyit Eminof, he would not give him up. He died protecting him. He would never betray his son even when he felt betrayed. As fate would have it Seyit would never be able to thank his father, to say goodbye, or to apologize had we wanted to, not to his father, not to his sweet mother, not to his brothers. 

Fought as he did to not have Osman fight in the battlefield where guns and bullets killed. Osman died by the hand of someone who had been a soldier, one of Seyit's closest friends. In the chaos, one of his soldiers and dearest friends, had become a traitor, a communist. 

With his family buried in the ground, he tried to save Osman, he had avenged his brother, but Seyit could not stop the blood pouring out of his brother's wound. 

He would always live with regret. Regret that told he could have done better. He should have saved his family, he should have seen that MiŞa was a traitor. Lost in his mind, soon Seyit realized he had left a part of him with his family. The part of him that trusted, the part of him that was capable of conditional love. 

They had died because of him. 

His father's words ...

_"...Never bring that woman to this house and don't come as long as you're with her." _  
  


_"I'll live as if you never came back from the front." _

And his mother's pleads... All were seared into his brain. Try as he might, he would never be able to tune them out. 

Late at night for the years to come they would haunt his dreams. They would quietly whisper until one day they began to shout. 

On board that ship that promised safety, he could only hug the corpse of his youngest brother. He barely had the mind to remember that Şura was beside him. He barely had any room in his arms left to hold her too. 


	2. How to Live

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Şura and Seyit arrived by boat to Istanbul, this narrative is trying to work through Seyit's mind during their time at Istanbul, when the two do not know where Şura's family is, where to go, or what to do.

_ **How to Live** _

The days were long in Istanbul, money was short and emotions ran high. 

These were unprecedented times. He and Şura, along with millions of others were misplaced, lived in a city not their own, a city that belonged to no one, that was occupied by perfect strangers. Why should he back down to these unwelcome guests? Who ravished, who destroyed, and who hurt? The English with their poor army skills and their lack of respect aggravated him and scared Şura. During those early days, he loved protecting her. 

During those early days he wanted to do everything so she could continue living her life like she had in Russia. Even he could not do that for her. In order for her to live as she had, she needed her family by her side and he could not bring them to her, Russian citizens were scattered all around Europe, or worse some had never left Russia and laid dead in the soil. 

What he loved most about her was her strength and optimism. At times he could not help but notice the sadness in her eyes when she did not receive information about her family from the Russian embassy. Time after time her face deflated at the lack of news but she'd quickly forge on a smile. She'd walk forward with her small hand wrapped around his arm. 

He could not help but think it was he who had put her in this dangerous predicament. 

He begins to think they should have listened to their families. Their many reasons to part made sense under the Istanbul sky, when each of them took up one corner of their small hotel room. 

But if she wasn't the one for him, then how come they had lived through what they had? 

He knew he had to stop listening to his demons and had to listen to his heart. He wanted her to be his wife. He wanted a future together. 

But they were homeless, stateless, without a family and without a compass. 

They say a man's conscience is his compass and his conscience was confused. It was riddled with conflicting voices, conflicting thoughts, and pain. Pain, that no amount of love could heal. It was unrealistic to expect her to heal him and he to heal her. 

It was unbelievable the things they went through. _It had gotten to the point were to release the pain they hurt each other. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: Hello! I hope if there are any readers that you are enjoying this. I just wanted to give some background information because I am a history major and I got into the show because of the historical premise. Şura and Seyit are in Istanbul. 
> 
> From November 1918 to October 1923 British, Italian and French forces occupied the city after the end of the Ottoman Empire's involvement in WWI. According to an article I read, Istanbul was a city of "poverty and refugees." The Allied Forces (in WWI they were Britain, France, Russia, Italy and the US) divided the city by nationalities. The show depicts the British forces occupying Istanbul, they are not the brightest according the Seyit. In later chapters I will also mention the Turkish revolutionaries that arise in Anatolia. Historically the British wanted to provide aid to the local agencies in Anatolia in order to help suppress the Turkish revolutionaries. There are reports of the British underestimating the Turks and their need for independence. 
> 
> https://today.duke.edu/2015/04/ottoman
> 
> http://www.danielpipes.org/900/istanbul-under-allied-occupation-1918-1923


	3. Too Good at Goodbyes

_ **Too Good at Goodbyes** _

Countless times Seyit returned to their room late, for he had time for everyone except Şura. He had time to go on different missions, to help different people, but increasingly and to Şura's frustration, no time to mind her. She found solace in the fact that he always returned. 

During his absences, Şura tried to bat away doubts and found comfort with Petro around. Petro who smelt of Russia, who reminded her of her father, of their childhood summers spent together at his or her's house. Petro bore everyone's trust, until it was too late. Petro would reassure her at times that Seyit was fine. He would attempt to silence the gossip running around about Seyit. Petro shined in broad daylight with a million virtues, by night he'd go dark with all of his sins and openly demonstrate his flaws. 

He was not a friend but a foe. 

* * *

Seyit did not realize he had said goodbye to Şura the night he was arrested. He took a long look at her to memorize her face, what he ended up remembering most vividly was her worrisome expression. He had ordered Celil, his one true and most trusted friend, to have her board a ship to London. He equated London with safety and London was far away from him. Him, he thought bitterly, the one with all the enemies. 

He wrote his heart out in what he had assumed were his last words to Şura. He put ink to paper and told her everything he had not recently. Some things he had never said. He poured out his love into what he had assumed was his last letter to Şura. 

There was nothing holding him back, he did not fear death. Had he lived the life he wanted? Sadly no, there was no time, he would be incomplete, unfinished. He would die but his blood would not drain in vain, he knew through his cell mate, that both of them, along with the other innocent Turks, would be avenged by the revolutionaries in Anatolia.

If he was honest with himself, a small part of him was relieved, he would love her to his very last breath and he doing so would not be hurting anyone. His father's voice which haunted him daily, would be silenced. His father would not tell him he disapproved anymore, he would not hear his mother's sobs, he would not see Osman's lifeless eyes every time he closed his. 

Maybe now he would see his family again, find them in another realm. Maybe like this they would love him back, for he had not gone against their wishes, he had not stayed with Şura. A long marriage filled with love was not for him, but at least he could see his father and speak with him. He would no longer put Şura in danger. 

_Finally, a part of him would not hate himself for loving her. _

* * *

As always when Seyit felt like the end was approaching, it was a new beginning that was blooming. Just as he was going to be hanged he was released from prison. Şura was not in London, she was working his laundry shop. She was carrying his torch. He was both relieved and angry. 

They tried it. They made love and they fought. His mistakes were unforgivable, her naivety was unforgivable, she trusted everyone, while he barely trusted himself. 

He became someone who hurt her on purpose. He did not trust her. Her and Petro had worked to have him released from prison, but in what ways, _how, _were they working together? How could she be so blind to not seek her own safety in London, away from him? Her unconditional love, he realized was stupidity. 

He became cowardly in his love for her and she demanded more than what he could give. He could not give her anything because he had no more words. They were all in the letter he wrote her. Had he poured out too much of his heart? His love? Had he none left to give? 

The fights were endless, making up only to fight again. The vicious cycle began again every few days. She was his home, but he was willing to vacate his home. He was beginning to wonder if they were holding on to an idea. The cycles their love was suffering through was just that, a circle, with no exit or different route, would they find one? Or were they bound to run in circles for the rest of their life? 

When he told her he would regret it more if he stayed. He meant it. For this was no way to live and he wanted her to live. No amount of love would restore trust. No amount of love would heal them. 

**What were they to each other?** _They were painful reminders of what they had lost. _


	4. Once Upon a Time in Bulgaria

**_Author's Note: _**Today we will be hearing from someone other than Seyit. Enjoy! 

** _Once Upon a Time in Bulgaria _ **

_Beware for this is not a fairytale, it is not a tale for the faint hearted. _

* * *

Once you've seen death you cannot unsee it. As Mürvet, her beloved father, and her inseparable sister Mehire, crossed borders and trudged on the road ahead, they saw despair, cruelty and death. Those afflicted by illness, those who could walk no longer, and those paralyzed by fear and the beasts in the forests who willingly gave into despair. Once you've witnessed death, it sneaks up behind you, tries to grip your soul. Mürvet and Mehire's father would never allow his children to be tortured by what they had seen, so he built them a fort made of beautiful and hopeful fairytales.

* * *

There were gangs who sought to hurt the refugees crossing their lands. There were neighborhoods that jeered at the group of refugees seeking home. Unwanted and a burden they were on the town's resources, why should they be welcomed with open arms, when they were so... so... alien? 

For every unwelcoming face and mean remark there was kindness. At welcoming neighborhoods, Mürvet and Mehire were a sight to see. Homely and kind women held them close, the twins, with their big hazel eyes attracted motherly instincts. On these kind and homely women, Mürvet and Mehire would search for their mother. It had been so long since they had seen her, they had forgotten what she looked and what she smelt like. Mürvet liked to imagine that her mother would have soft hands, like the woman who gave her and the other children in the group bread. Mürvet liked to think her mother smelt like jasmine, Mehire would giggle and say she **_knew_ **their mother smelt like vanilla. 

* * *

Despite having been twins, the girls proved to be very different in temperament. They could never agree on anything but they balanced each other out. Mürvet and Mehire were expected by their father to be quiet and observant as to not draw any attention to them selves. Mürvet would follow behind him quietly, Mehire would sometimes walk ahead of him, he often had to remind her to stay close, for in foreign and as immigrants they were easy prey. For gangs, thieves, and any one who sought to do them harm. Their father and the girls had to pretend to be so many different people. They had to learn stay in the background in order to survive. 

Her dearest _baba, _would tell her and her sister that it was all a game. As they got older they understood what they were doing, pretending to fit in, in whatever country they were crossing, was not an innocent game, it was the only way they could stay alive. 

Mehire would feel constricted. The situation she was in subdued her playful personality. She had always been more extroverted and easily alarmed than her sister. Mürvet, on the other hand, had a quiet resilience. To the inexperienced eye, she might appear shy or weak, but underneath that quiet demeanor there was steel. 

* * *

Their father told stories as they hid in different forests so that the twins and the other children in their group would not cry when they heard animals howling in the middle of the night. Mürvet always sat enthralled by his stories, memorizing every line her father told. Most of his stories spoke about brave wolves fighting the gangs that chased Mürvet and her family. Wolves became her favorite animal, she admired their bravery and sought to emulate it. 

Mürvet and Mehire were only six when they got separated from their mother and brother. They had not understood what was happening then. They remembered their mother hurrying them as they carried their belongings. Then they remembered only the long walks from town to town with their father. Their father was the kindest soul and the best dad anyone could have, always sweet to his daughters, acting as best he could to be both mother and father. He always promised the girls that they would find their mother and brother. They would find their home and their family soon. Soon they will be cared for by their beautiful mother, soon they would play with their brother. 

* * *

Mürvet and Mehire did not understand the gravity of the situation until they were teenagers and their father died. He had died of tuberculosis. In their plight to get home they never noticed that their father was sick. The day he died, their world became dark, he was gone and they were left all alone in a world torn apart by war, they knew they had to survive in a strange country without him. They knew that had to pretend a little bit more, had to pretend a little bit longer to be something they were not.

_They had to pretend not to feel the fear creeping in. _

* * *

Mürvet and Mehire had only each other left. Each day was getting harder and harder, slowly, Mehire lost her vibrancy, she too would fall ill. When Mürvet lost her she lost a part of her soul. The person who knew her inside and out was gone. She was in every sense of the word, alone. That first night alone, Mürvet hugged herself and sobbed into sleep finally took over. 

She was homeless, stateless, and depending on the kindness of strangers. She was a skillful cook and would help her camp of fellow refugees by cooking a meal with whatever ingredients were available. She would tell her father's stories to anyone who would listen but she found that children were more responsive to her father's stories. The young children of the camp helped her stay alive without even knowing it, because of them she began to invent her own stories, she felt treasured, their small hands in hers, reminded her of her sister and father. She knew that she could not afford to lose hope, she had to tell herself that her mother and brother were out there, safe and looking for her, she would stay alive for them. She would reach home. 

* * *

One day a letter arrived to the camp. It came from a man named Hakki, Hakki happened to be the name of her brother. Had they found each other? He arrived in Bulgaria to take her more. She arrived to Istanbul by train. 

She had tears in her eyes when she saw her mother. Her mother, Emine, was more beautiful than Mürvet and Mehire had ever imagined her to be. The best part was hugging her mother for the first time in twelve years, the worst part was breaking her heart by informing her that Mehire and _baba_ would not come home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Baba means dad in Turkish ;).


	5. It is not light that we need but fire

_It is not light that we need but_ **fire. **

> _"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being." -A.S._
> 
> * * *
> 
> Danger! Danger, was around the corner, Mürvet's mother, Emine, warned. Mürvet was to be careful, she was not to draw attention to herself, she was to be aware and to stay far away from cruel English soldiers who hurt young women. It seemed to Mürvet roar home was not too different from Bulgaria where she had last been and where she feared the same things. But she was curious about this place, about her mother, about her brother, there were so many things she did not know but how she wished to learn. Unexpectedly she found herself trying to catch a glimpse of the neighborhood through curtain windows though her mother told her not to, unexpectedly she did not know how to be around her family, as happy as she was to be there with them. 
> 
> * * *
> 
> Emine was right, for in the middle of the night, Mürvet was forced awake by her mother, smoke filtering in every corner of her room. A fire had broken out in the neighborhood and reach their home! 
> 
> Quick in the face of adversity, her mother helped Mürvet dress and once outside Mürvet gathered the neighborhood's children away from the flames. 
> 
> Mürvet could not fathom why her mother had run inside the house, fearing her mother's safety she ran after her. She would not lose her mother when she had just found her. 
> 
> Suddenly she was grabbed from behind, big arms engulfed her body. These were the type of men her mother had warned her about, those who take advantage of tragedy to commit crimes, she kept screaming out for her mother, for help, but her screams were drowned out by the fire. 
> 
> She stopped screaming when she found herself submerged in water. The man had dunked in the water fountain! As she looked up at the perpetrator, she found herself staring at a man the height of trees, with golden hair, and the most beautiful pair of eyes. 
> 
> Turns out that in the chaos of the situation, Mürvet's long skirt had caught fire without her noticing. 
> 
> * * *

Seyit did a double take. It was clear by her expression that she was upset, before he could explain that her skirt had been on fire, he had to look twice. He was looking at an exquisite face, dark eyebrows framing big, beautiful, hazel eyes. Her dark hair spread through the water, it was clear despite the girl's dace being contorted into a frown, that she was beautiful. 

As he helped salvage furniture from the neighborhood and said his goodbyes to Mr. Lüftu (the man was the reason why he was in that neighborhood at that time of night, he had recently become acquainted with him, after having shared a jail with the man's now deceased brother) his eyes unwillingly gravitated towards the girl. 

A few days later he would learn her name was Mürvet. He found himself sounding out her name in his head, every time he looked at the burn scar on his arm. 


	6. The Unknown

** _The Unknown_ **

There were many things that Mürvet did not know. Her life had consisted of her trying to survive and find her home. She had learned to keep quiet around her mother, who was stern and overprotective. She did not want to upset or bother her mother. Her mother had suspicions about everyone, people's intentions and feelings. 

Mürvet though now eighteen, still wanted to be held by her mother. She wanted to be loved and hugged by her mother, but as she learned it proved hard for her mother to demonstrate emotion at times. Not because her mother was a bad person but because what she had seen turned her distrustful. Just as Mürvet, Mehire and their father, their mother had to survive with a little boy at her side for many years. 

Mürvet knew that women traveling alone were susceptible to many injustices. A woman seeking asylum alone without her husband was easy to ridicule and hurt. 

Mürvet had been lucky to have her father around, who tried to preserve her childhood for as long as he could by inciting games and stories through their perilous times. He never made it seem like what they were experiencing was different from what other people were experiencing, of course as she got older she realized they were on a different path than most people. Most people had a home and their mother and father. Despite it all and thanks to her father Mürvet had grown observant but not distrustful, she possessed an innocence untainted by war, by hunter, by pain. Despite it all she inherently believed in goodness, she believed people were good despite the ongoing war and the occupation of Istanbul. She believed that things would get better in time (with help of the Turkish revolutionaries, she heard whispers about but pretended not to). If she ever distrusted it was because doubt would be planted in her by others. 

* * *

It seemed people here, in Pera, loved to talk about one another. Pera was their temporary home, a bustling city that her mother hated. But her mother and her were to stay at a family friend's hotel while their house was being repaired. Mürvet tried to ignore the gossip around her, she had never had time for such mundane things before, and honestly she did not like it. But when Ayse (the daughter of their old family friend, a girl close to Mürvet's age and friendly) told her how liberally people lived in Pera, she was shocked. Her mother had been right to be distrustful of this place. 

While in Pera she learned that the man who had helped her during the fire ran a laundry shop located near the hotel. She wondered about him. But she also wondered about many other things. But most of the time she wondered how the man's kisses felt. She had seen him kiss a beautiful young lady, his wife she assumed, that was until Ayse told her otherwise. The young beautiful lady was not his wife, but one of _those women who lived and worked_ in Pera, Ayse whispered to Mürvet one night. Mürvet had allowed her curiosity to win, and watched him because she noticed the light in the woman's and his eyes, a look that spoke of love and tenderness. 

She had seen death but not love and she had never seen a man and a woman kiss.

There were so many things she did not know. But a kiss, she knew, she would only want from Seyit. She had learned his name recently but had prohibited herself from thinking about that name. When thoughts about kisses crossed her mind, she shooed them away, for it was an inappropriate thought (he might not be married but it was still not right), but it was a thought that filled her stomach with butterflies. 

* * *

Mürvet knew her mother to be very protective, how could she not be? They had lost each other and after twelve years they had found each other. She had overheard her mother talk about marriage, Mürvet's marriage. Her mother wanted to marry her off to be away from danger; for her to able to walk through this new, unknown city besides a brave husband, only then no English soldier could touch her. Mürvet did not want to part from her mother. She would not go against her mother's wishes but she did not want to marry so soon. 

Besides the inspiration to her stories, who played the prince or the wolf, at her whim, the protagonist of all the stories she told to entertain children, was one man. The man she rarely permitted herself to think about, but the one she imagined as her husband, as far fetched as that ideas was. 

Unknown to Mürvet, Lüftu also imagined the same man as her husband. He had become friends with Seyit, Lüftu had lost one brother but gained another. Seyit had proved himself an asset to his revolutionary cause, both wanted the city free from the Allied Forces. Plus he had noticed the way Seyit looked at Mürvet, with a glint of curiosity and interest. Two factors that he felt were enough to bring them together. He would marry off his new brother to a kind and beautiful girl, if Mürvet wanted it so. If she did then Emine would be comforted that her daughter would be safe and _cared for._


	7. The Decision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seyit is faced with a decision about his future.

**The Decision**

****Someone like him never expected life to be easy. Someone like him never hoped for an easy life. Someone like him thrived on a challenge. He was a warrior. He was a lover to only one. 

Someone like him never expected love. Someone like him never expected to love someone like her. She was a young girl when they met. Someone like her was not meant to be with someone like him. Someone like her would have a fanciful life, filled with carefree laughter. She had the pedigree and the manners to marry royalty. He would be the dutiful son as he was soldier and he would return home and marry the wife chosen for him, he would find his romance and lust in the battlefield. These were the lives they'd lead, but the world did not pause for these wishes, their life plans diverged and they found each other. The world as they had known it, ended.

War spares no one. Those at home grief for those at the front. Those at the front grief for those at home and their fallen brothers. Those at the front might not make it out at all. War had taken his family. War had destroyed his home. War had taken his last goodbye. War dried out his lips and flooded his eyes with tears. 

War had destroyed expectations. War brought him to the ball where he met his little woman. War was victorious when his young lover jumped from the train, leaving her family behind, and into his arms. He thought her silly and naive, the kind of naivety that comes with youth. But he was grateful for it. 

* * *

_ **Naivety. ** _

Seyit liked to think that out of the two of them, he was the more formidable one. Şura was the naive one, the one who trusted too much. But the more he thought about it he realized they were both naive. They shunned any words of advice in their early days and now he imagined what it would they look like if they had heeded to advice. 

They were naive with their expectations. It had been so long, she had waited for so long, he had loved her for so long, with their loss, with their grief, hand in hand, with their few belongings, they fought and cried and waited for forever when it came and went. They ran together, they fought side by side, they argued, they made love, they shouted horrible things at one another, they ran in circles, expecting to end up with something better, only to run in another circle. 

*

Şura grew tired of her sister's shrill voice, telling her to demand more from Seyit. Şura was always the one with the packed bags ready to jump when Seyit gave the word. 

Everyone knew of their broken promises, _his_ broken promises. Had she not grown tired? She had an infinite source of patience for him and he could not afford an ounce for her. 

Şura sanked into the bathtub as her sister rubbed circles on her back. 

"Tina, do we look like naive, silly girls arguing here?" She wondered out loud, in response her sister sighed. 

*

He heard all the voices all at once. His father's sharp words, his mother's pleading wails, Şura's tear-filled accusations, Celil's encouraging words, Emine's harsh rejections, Mürvet's musical voice recounting her father's stories.

And he heard his, after a long time, loud and clearly. 

He took a swig of his vodka. He winced, not for the burning in his throat but the burning in his soul. 

_ **Distrust. ** _

The rational part of him told him not to trust Petro. He would slice him out of his life, only for him to find his way back. Petro was to Şura, what Celil was to him, a wonderful childhood friend. Most importantly, a living, breathing proof, of happier times, of a home. The irrational part of him distrusted her. She and Petro worked together, how many times? Why did she find it so easy to smile with Petro? Did she not realize how it hurt him that she would rather stay with Petro? 

Lost trust cannot be regained, is what he learned. He returned to her, each and every time, empty handed. When he confessed to a night with a woman, he broke the thin veil of trust. Şura cried and he was the source of both their pain. There was nothing Seyit could say to reassure Şura of his love. After all he had done, after marriage proposals but no wedding, Şura rested anxiously.

Şura walked the streets in Istanbul restlessly. For the rest of her life she would walk down the streets, wondering who was the other woman who knew Seyit so intimately. Was it the woman at the clerk counter? Was it the woman who served them their tea? Was it the woman she had encountered at the pharmacy? No, it was the woman who smiled at Seyit from across the road. For the rest of her life, she would look at every woman Seyit laid eyes on and wonder if it was_ her. _

They had loved so much that it turned to hate. Şura hated herself for being the fool that was at Seyit’s beck and call. Seyit hated himself for becoming the man of her nightmares.

_ ** Killing. ** _

He was an expert at aiming a gun and pulling the trigger, on the battlefield. It was his survival instinct kicking in. There was an enemy that had to perish, it was either the enemy or him.

Every bullet carried a purpose. He was fighting for his survival, he was fighting for his country, he was fighting to try and save his father, mother and brother. He tried and fail.  Now he had no family to avenge, now he had no country to fight for, no Czar to protect. 

It was his survival instinct kicking in. For this battle, he needed no weapons. He needed the proper tools. He wanted to build from the ground up. To leave the dead buried, grief them as he had, and try to move forward. He wanted to hold his family, but they were gone, so he would make his own. He had no home, so he would build one with his bare hands, from the ground up. Here and now, on this soil he laid claim to and was fighting for, he would build from the ground up. 

He was being carried down by the weight of his past. He wanted to shed his past and feel anew. He needed the springtime, with its warm sunrise and its beautiful sunsets. He needed the springtime, with its blossoming flowers and gardens. He needed the springtime, with its renewed hope, to feel that he could start again. He needed the springtime to tell him that the destruction of the past and the horrors he witnessed would not define him. He needed the springtime, with its warm and soft sun to shine its rays on him and rejuvenate him. 

He knew that in order to have peace, they needed to start fresh.It was too late to start over with each other.They could only endure so many fights and makeups.

They were becoming a spectacle and he had decided to extinguish it.

It was his survival instinct kicking in. He knew that it would _have_ to be him. He knew that it would _need_ to be him. He knew that in order for her to survive, she would have to be as far removed from him as possible. She too, would need to shed her past and she would not take the first step. He knew that to ensure a future, they had to quit the past. 

He never imagined it would be this hard. Aim, finger on the trigger, shoot. This time, he was up close. He was suffocating a love that had been his lifeline. He remembered when it started and he knew the hour it would end. 

_ **"...if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death; I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.”-G.G.** _

* * *

_ **White Roses** _

Lüftü with his large kind eyes and good intentions informed him of his plans. Among this revolution, he found time to be a matchmaker. 

_"...I will marry you two."_ Seyit could not imagine it, until he did. 

She'd rarely meet his eyes to his great amusement. He realized she was a shy, young girl, who had never been in the company of many men. She had recently come home. She had been lost in the wake of the war. Her mother, Emine, a formidable woman, amused him much less than she annoyed him. He found Murka, as he decided to call her, more friendly when her mother was not around. He knew her to be young, but she was a fighter, in her quiet way. She had survived in foreign lands, she had survived the deaths of her father and sister, she could handle his truth. He chose to be honest with her. 

The first time she spoke her mind shocked him. She told him she knew there to be a great love between Şura and him. Who had gotten to her before he could?

No one. She saw them.

Observant, he noted. 

He chose to say the truth. He and Şura were on different paths now, they belonged to different lives. He sensed a sadness in her, perhaps even disappointment. Had he been wrong in assessing her? Maybe she did not want his truth. But her eyes gave away a flash of understanding before they were downcast again. Her arms moved from her sides to work, picking up the plate she had just brought in. 

He allowed himself to speak his nickname for her out loud, _"Murka..."_

There she was, the fire he knew she possessed. With quick words, she informed him that was not her name and she would respond to her name only. He was relieved, this is was their longest conversation and hopefully not their last. 

Why her? She had asked. Why her and not the woman she knew he loved... he is sure she wondered. For they were on different paths, he had decided it so. He knew he and Şura had been derailed from finding any peace and what he wanted was peace. 

He once imagined a marriage like his parents. Resilient, a strong foundation, lively, a home with three boys, a family and a loving marriage. He needed springtime's hope and she had arrived by train in the springtime.

Why her and not someone else? Because she interested him. Because he felt new with her. When she sneaked a glance at him, he felt tickled, was she _really_ looking at him? Or was she just curious about him like she was about everything else that was new to her? Because she reminded him of the girls back home, whom his mother mentored and who he rarely spoke to for he was training to be a soldier. Because he wanted to know what she thought, because he knew she observed everything but what did she make of everything? 

Because she needed rescuing just as much as he did. He'd teach her what he knew in exchange for a fairytale and a soft touch from her hand to make him feel brand new. Because they'd take turns being the teacher and the pupil. She'd ask him about the city and he'd patiently listen and answer and he'd learn to love again with every single touch. 

Because if he could not start brand new and unscarred, he would be with someone who would make him feel brand new with every gaze and help him build scar tissue. Because he knew the mistakes he had made and would not repeat them now. Because he trusted her with his plans and because she wanted to be part of them.

Most because ever since Lüftü had told him he planned to have him marry Mürvet, the thought crept into his mind, without him planning it so.

Ever since her hair swam around her after he deposited her in the fountain, during the fire, he wanted to feel her hair, was it soft? He’d it imagine it so, cascading down her shoulders as he stood before her.

* * *

It surprised him so, how normal it felt to buy the white roses and the chocolate to take to her home and ask for her hand. He thought of Şura, their plans for multiple weddings, he thought of how excited his mother would be and he thought how Murka would make a beautiful bride.

He thought this would ensure everyone's future and lives. 

What he had not expected were her mother’s cruel words, that rang so close to what his father had said. What he had not expected was the humiliation and the heat rise up behind his neck as her mother rejected him. He vowed to never return.

Away she went, the girl he pictured as his wife after a long night of thinking... away she went. Away went the kind heart he wished to be engulfed by, in order to be able to see kindness once again.  Away went she went, with those expressive eyes he did not want to hide from, a girl he saw being the mother of his children. Away she went, his promise of the future, one he thought he would never be given. 


	8. The Future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You will find two bold sentences in quotations, one at the beginning of the chapter and one in the text, those two are quotes that help me write this chapter. On a different note, originally I planned for this work to be eight chapters but I have been adding more to what I have written, there will be a couple more chapters to come. :)

**The Future**

** _"I don't know what the future may hold, but I know who holds the future." _ **

"_...Never bring that woman to this house and don't come as long as you're with her." _

_"I wish you hadn't tainted your heart with flings." _

His father’s voice so effortlessly meshed with Emine’s. The same harshness in their eyes, their baffled expressions at his audacity.

How dare _he_, bring that woman to his father’s land, when he had so explicitly demanded he not.How dare _he,_ ask to marry Emine’s daughter, unattainable as she was, with her pure heart to his tainted past.

How dare Emine insult him, dare to attempt to shame him and disrespect Şura. She had reminded him of his father, with her unfaltering morality, clutching to her beliefs, openly disdainful to him for failing to meet both their standards.What did she know about his life, about his love?

He would never deny his relationship with Şura, he would never be ashamed of his tainted heart. He had decided to let her go in order to build forward, but their times together would live in his heart. He would rid himself of her photographs, but he folded their memories deep in his heart, for treasured keeping, she would stay there forever. 

Every pump of blood traveling through his heart, every beat, she’d be nurtured there. For his heart never failed her, it always loved her. Their past would lay there for safekeeping. Their past would be there, because he could not afford to live in the past , because he could not store her in his mind any longer, because he had expected his future to come about differently.

Someone like him, it turned out, would not have _Şura_ or _Murka_.

His only fault had been that he had placed Şura in the shadows long before he left her. He had prioritized the future without thinking it could cost him his present. Their love became a burden they were dragging along, during a time they could not afford to fall behind. His body never tired of the adrenaline he found when engaging in battle with Şura but his soul and heart were drained after all the arguments that corroded their love.

He thought he knew who could help him for once and for all end the past. He thought he knew how to put to rest a long chapter of his life and who could help him write a new one.He was not going to start from scratch with her, he would start from_ experience_. He was not entering blind, he knew they would have to learn each other but they would have their entire lives to do so. He knew they would have their own set of obstacles, but these would be a different set of obstacles, ones that were not overshadowed and amplified by a life gone by. The tears he had shed on another love, on his family,_ he wanted to use towater the seeds of his future._

Try as he might to not feel hurt, a part of him could not help but feel hurt. It hurt to be so unceremoniously dismissed. It hurt to realize that the white roses he bought would not flower in the springtime, they’d wither and die.

* * *

_"What kind of name is Ivaro?"_

“It is a Bulgarian name, meaning _wolf._” Saime answered for Mürvet and threw her a knowing smile. Mürvet tried to look unaware.She would never admit it out loud but the man her mother had rejected was still the protagonist in her stories.

She loved telling stories and Saime and the neighborhood ladies loved to hear them. Her stories were a welcomed past-timeand distraction for her neighbors. She was sure Saime grew worried and tired after hearing the same talks about the dangerous missions the revolutionaries were undertaking, being that her husband was planner and at times executioner of these plans.With every new story, with every new dazzling detail, with her illustrious words, she instilled hope in the women. The hope that their world would soon turn peaceful, that they would feel as peaceful and child-like as they felt when they smiled at Mürvet’s tales.

With every story she’d keep Kurt Seyit alive in her dreams, hidden in plain sight. She’d say the stories were her father’s if anyonequestioned her vivid descriptions of a golden haired man with ocean eyes. He’d be a shapeshifter in her stories and be free from pain and the destruction of war. He’d live a thousand lives, all very happy lives in her stories. He’d lay protected in her imagination. He’d shed no tears in her stories, he would have his family and he would have his love. No one could take her stories from her or change their ending.

Try as she might to not feel hurt, a part of her could not help but feel hurt. It hurt to have a dream so close to realization be snatched from her fingers. She’d wish she had spoken up, to have mustered up the courage to go against her mother’s wishes,but her words tightened in her throat, withered and died. 

She hid her sorrow and in her stories she too would find happiness, there would be a heroine who took her place and whose wishes would come true. And she’d find renewed joy as she looked at the faces of her enthralled audiences, both young and old, every time she recounted a dramatic story. And she’d vivaciously laugh along with the delighted children, who happily ran about after the princess rescued the wolf and turned him into a prince.

** "That is what storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again."  **

* * *

He did what he could with that he had. What he had learned is that the world does not grant time to grief. The night ends and the sun rises. He walked forward, focused on the small tasks that were pending at his laundry business. He undertook greater missions, stole the goods back from the English and their accomplice, Petro, who he knew he was right to distrust. He undertook the painful task of trying to fork out Şura from his mind.

Most of his time was spent at the laundry or at Lüftü’s.He would admit that he found a familiar atmosphere at Lüftü’s home.Seyit’s family had been rich but traditional. Lüftü’s wise face and calm demeanor reminded him of his uncles and his wife, Saime, reminded him of his mother. She had warm eyes and was a partner to Lüftü in every way, just as his mother had been to his father. He suspected the two stayed up to recount the day’s events sitting on their favorite couch, just as his father and mother had. He would never admit it, as he was a grown man, but he returned to Lüftü’s day after day, to assist of course with the revolution, but also to bask under that family’s atmosphere.

Try as he might to avoid Mürvet, it was not always possible to avoid seeing her. He noticed she was a hard worker, he’d see her fetching water at the fountain, where they first met. When he did see her there, he would go the other way, afraid of getting her in trouble. He’d run into her as he was entering or leaving Lüftü’s. As it turns out, she had also adopted Lüftü into her family. She would bring by homemade pies and pastries for Lüftü and his family to enjoy.

Try as he might to not cross paths with Mürvet, fate likes to see him in awkward situations. They came face to face at Lüftü’s when she was bringing yet another pie. This time he made his appreciation known, he couldn’t help but smile at her, a smile which she shyly returned back.

He could not help but think that she’d make a wonderful mother, she had a nurturing spirit and a good heart. He could not help but think that, _this_ was what he was looking for.

* * *

One can only wonder if Lüftü was a brave or reckless man. For with bringing up Seyit to Emine, he was inciting her wrath. Nonetheless, he was the first to challenge Emine’s decision.

As he did, Emine’s irritation became obvious and Mürvet could not handle another conversation about how she would not marry _that_ man. Lüftü was looking for an answer, however, because to him it was becoming obvious that these two could work together. He had seen the soft smiles between them, he had witnessed how Mürvet cared for an injured Seyit. A picture of his old lover might have prevented a bullet from entering his chest, but it was Mürvet who healed him. She had managed to get rid of his fever, she had managed to love him a bit more despite her resolution to forget him.

It was Lüftü who dared ask the obvious and who asked Mürvet what she wanted. Her mother, brother and Lüftü turn to look at her andwait for her response.

She is taken aback, afraid she knows what she wants, she pretends not to, and sits silently. No one had ever asked her what she wanted before, her life had consisted of doing what was necessary without paying attention to the whirlwind of emotions inside of her. Whatever she felt she had to repress but not this time. Now she was being asked to pinpoint the meaning behind why any thought of him caused butterflies in her stomach. She was being asked to pinpoint why her heart beat faster when he was in close proximity and why she could not bear to look him straight in the eye. What feeling was she afraid her eyes would betray if she did look him in the eye for longer than a second?

She is afraid to learn that what she is feeling could be love. She is more afraid of not knowing. She is afraid that he does not and will never love her. She is afraid of not knowing herself around him, of exposing herself.

Yet she is more afraid of not trying.

She wishes upon the sky to let her know if he loves her, a deep sadness overtakes her when the sky does not move. Will it always be like this?

* * *

Mürvet’s breakfast looked unappealing. She looked down at her hands as she often did when she was nervous. She was nervously avoiding her mother, who sat in front of her, expectantly. Her mother wanted an answer, her mother did not want to toy with the matter of marriage any longer. Her mother would not deny her wishes, but her mother did not know how hard the previous night had been. But Mürvet did reach an answer …

She would look for her love in the night sky. She would seek him in the stars, but she would not marry him. Her heart would beat, ache, and break only for him, but she would not marry him. He would be the feeling behind her thoughts, but he would not be her’s. Her unshakeable sadness told her he would seek another in the stars. Her unshakable sadness told her his heart would beat, ache, and break for another. She did not want to be the feeling of regret that bubbled in his stomach when he came home.

“I do not want to marry Kurt Seyit, mom.”

For a moment, Emine looks at her and asks, “no?” Mürvet never expected her mother to press her on about her response; she thought her mother had made up her mind about Seyit.

Now she does not know what her mother wants to hear so she threads delicately. She lets her know she would not want to leave home so soon after just having found home. She was honest and confessed she did not want to leave home only to never find true love. She does not let her know that she is afraid this marriage will bring her and Seyit great unhappiness.

Emine prided herself in being a good hostess and a woman who no one could confront especially about her manners, for she had always tried to be hospitable and amicable. As soon as she had rejected Seyit she had felt guilty for so harshly removing him from her home, but also did not like surprises. And she liked people who respected tradition. He had disrespected her, she felt, when he had arrived so unprepared to ask for her daughter’s hand. The only daughter she had left and the one she would protect with her own life. She had began to wonder, based on Mürvet’s reaction, if she had hurt her too with her harsh words. Mürvet never brought the matter up but now that they were talking, she wanted to know her daughter’s feelings. She was afraid her words brought uncertainty to her daughter, that her daughter felt like she did not deserve to be married to the man she might love, and she did not want her daughter to feel inferior to any one else.

“…I am afraid he does not love me.” Mürvet finally confessed to her mother.

Marriage may start with a love. A loving word, a loving glance, a loving touch, but as Emine had seen it, it could end if it does not have more than that. One may enter a relationship full of love, a marriage full of love, and find that it is ending because it was not enough.

Marriage requires not just love but support, understanding and companionship. As Emine had learned, we may love someone but we may not understand them, they may not support us, and less of all offer us companionship. They may be capable of hurting us. She knew her daughter to be strong, mentally, she wanted her partner to be strong, physically, for she needed her to be safe. She knew Seyit to be brave and strong, no one would think of harming his wife.

When she had found her husband, her children’s father, she did not know what she would find, she hoped for something kinder than what she had left. She had been strong and she knew she would be but she had been broken in irreparable and invisible ways. Mürvet’s father, the man she still reminisced about, his kind hazel eyes, much like her daughter’s, the jingle of his laughter she heard in Mürvet’s, he had been strong for her in the moments she was weak.Blind to the eye, her scars were, so he mended them with this soft touch. She learned he had been broken too, in different ways, broken promises, broken dreams... They had started a marriage with a broken foundation but with time figured out how to connect those pieces and build a strong foundation.

He became her friend, the one person she trusted, in return she became his confidant. He’d share his dreams for the future with her because he knew she’d want to be a part of them. She chose him and he chose her.

She knew Seyit, heard of his bravery and courage, and a part of her trusted him. She hoped that her daughter would find the same trust and companionship with someone like him. 

She suspected her daughter cared for the man and she would not deny her daughter’s happiness. Despite her less than friendly dealings with him, she respected him and found his views and thoughts admirable. He was a valiant man, he would make for a valiant husband, she hoped.

She would be there for her daughter, her daughter would live with her, under her protective gaze, if that man did try to harm her he would not be able to.

This was the end of the conversation, the end of this tale, if he was to accept fine, if not, fine.

Despite the doubt in her heart, Mürvet bit her lip, and worried if they were making the right choices.

* * *

Celil could not believe his ears, the great Kurt Seyit was to live with his mother-in-law and see daily his future sister-in-law, who was despicable.

Never in a million years could he imagine it. The thought of it made him laugh. He knew both Emine and Seyit to have strong personalities, he did not worry for his friend, for he knew how to defend himself, he worried for the bride who would undoubtedly be in the middle of it all.

Even with Lüftü and Celil making jokes at his expense, Seyit found himself smiling genuinely. He thought it funny, he was hoping to build a family and here he got a full house.

Would he live with his mother-in-law?

“Well, the order comes from the highest level.” He jokingly responded.

* * *

The one person he wanted to hear a clear answer from, he had yet to hear from or speak to. He figured it was time to change that. He always heard from her mother, he always received messages from Lüftü, and much to his chagrin, he could count on one hand the conversations they have had.

He wanted to be sure that she was entering this marriage because she wanted to. He wanted her to be every bit a consenting partner, for he would need her to be for the future they could have. The future he envisioned involved two not one. He wanted her to know this was a partnership in the making, her every wish, he’d follow, if she’d willingly stand by his side. If she gave him her trust. If she chooses to intertwine her life with his.

Since they were promised to each other after he agreed to her desires, he figured Emine would have no problem if he spoke to Murka.

He never gave it much thought, to why his eyes gravitated to her the first time he saw her. The first time her eyes met his in the middle of a fire. His eyes searched for her throughout the night as he helped her neighbors move out furniture. He had found himself clumsily helping her out of the fountain, not sure what to do with her, with her eyes staring into his. He never gave it much thought as to why he liked looking at her, he dismissed it as, her being so easy on the eyes. He never gave it much thought, when Lüftü, informed him of his plans, as to why his throat had gone dry. He never asked himself why he liked to catch even just one sentence of her stories and a shy look from her eyes. He never gave it much thought because he was restless. His mind and heart were heavy and many people were reaching out to him all at once.

He was being granted moments of silence, in which his thoughts filtered in. His thoughts that were pushing him into closing old chapters and writing new ones, with her appearing in them, more and more frequently.

He never gave it much thought as to why he was so moved when she met his eyes that night that Lüftü said he wanted to marry them to one another. It occurs to him now, as she opened the door to her house, her hijab flowing behind her, her brown hair cascading all around her, her cheeks turning a bright red, that he has always been in awe.

He has been in awe of her beauty, of her words, of her movements. He cannot take his eyes off of her as she moves so elegantly, quickly covering her hair once again. He cannot help but smile at her, her bright eyes meeting his. He soaks her beauty in. Her porcelain skin, one day he will be able to feel the softness of her face. Her slightly parted pink lips, the way her eyes pick up on her every feeling, the way the sun’s light gives them a greener color, the way they show shock at his words …

“I will live here, if you want me to.” He smiles at her, knowing he flusters her, but he has to ask, “**_d__o you want me_**?”

“I want to hear it from you, Murka.”

He knows his nickname for her causes her grief, but she’ll learn to love it, for he uses it lovingly. For now he will enjoy the slight frown forming in her brow and the hard look in her eyes.

“Do not call me Murka! My name is Mürvet.” Mürvet barely rose her voice but she silently chides herself for what she calls an outburst, she should not behave like this but she finds that she cannot control herself much when he is around. She gets nervous too quickly.

Not to be distracted Seyit reminds her of his question, he is here to hear it from her lips, so he presses on. To his endless delight, she is shy around him, from his soldier days, he knows this is good, he makes her feel something.

“_**I do.**_”

He could not imagine it, until he did. Hope needs a little imagination to thrive and hope is all that we need to imagine a future. He was so close to tomorrow’s future he could have everything, despite leaving everything behind. When Uncle Ali, questioned him about his actions and intentions and explained that Mürvet was a good girl, a girl who had been lost for most of her life, warning him to not unwittingly hurt everyone at once. He pictured this as he explained to Uncle Ali that what he wanted with Mürvet was to build a family. He imagined the way sun rays showcased the green and brown in her hazel eyes. He imagined feeling not an ounce of hurt, he imagined the only voice he’d hear from then on, would be hers, telling him she did want him and she did want to be part of his plans.


	9. Another Love

**Another Love **

_"I want to take you somewhere so you know I care_

_But it's so cold and I don't know where..." _

The white fabric caressed her skin as she slipped her dress on. She had been left alone to dress and fix her hair, to prepare for her wedding day. Her first taste of solitude and independence. She was now a woman, a soon to-be-married woman. She tried her best, with shaking fingers, to place her earrings and to button her dress.

Her mother tied around her waist a red ribbon, a symbol of purity. She was ready to be wedded. With nervous thoughts and hands she walked beside her mother to the room where she would receive the ceremony and blessings.

* * *

Her lungs contracted and hurt, she wasout of breath. Her fingers were slightly swollen, her legs were about to give at any moment, and she cannot remember how she made it to the second floor of the hotel, she just knew that she did.

She never would have imagined something like this was happening so she had to see that it was.When she heard the recitation of a wedding vow and his acceptance of it …for a second she felt foolish for not believing those who told her about Seyit’s plans, only for a second, because with such a sight she was soon filled with the feeling of betrayal.

* * *

He has formed yet another spectacle, in the middle of it, an innocent bystander got caught in the fire. He thought he had extinguished his past. He should have known better. For the past cannot lie dormant when it lives so close by, when it sits in the back of everyone’s minds. The work he had put into his heart and his mind, was crumbling down, the voices of his past echoed in his mind and bellowed out in anguish in front of him.His friends, Emine, and Şura stared him down with pity, disgust and pain.

* * *

There are degrees to pain, he thinks. Having been in some pain almost all of his life, he knows he is the one most in pain right now. He is asking too much those around him who are suffering too. They cannot feel him, they cannot understand him, their own pain is the worst to them, because they can only feel their own pain. If they could only see that to get here, he had to be cruel with himself, that he did not wish for that cruelty to hurt others. It had accidentally spilled over and harmed those around him but he was trying to contain it. He was creating a new road for Şura to move forward with. He was creating a new pathway for him to cross onto, he had been hoping that on that pathway he would be met by Mürvet.

The heartache physically exhausts Şura. The pain in her limbs and her mind is incomparable to that of the pain in her heart. She was grieving for someone she lost, not to death but to destiny. He was within reach, right at the tip of her fingers, at arms length, so close to her but so far. Just as he always had. He had laid beside her, their hands held together, but she had never been privy to his thoughts. Many times she had felt him so close yet so distant. She had tried to imagine what it was like in his mind but she lost at every attempt. Long before she lost him, he had become unreachable. Their years together came crushing down on her and made her legs go numb. The effort they had put in for years and years and the progress she thought they had made had evaporated as Seyit breathed out the promise of matrimony to someone else. Their loving words that were once whispered in the middle of the night, words she so vividly remembered, were now cast away. What they had always had was the promise of being reignited but not now. She was simultaneously trying to forget but trying to hold on to all the memories because they would not be making new ones.She had been torn open by Kurt Seyit Eminof, left to bleed out, how could he do this to her?

Even in her medically induced sleep she hated him and loved him. The hurt wallowed in her stomach and clutched to her body, until she had to move. She would go away from the city for her sister and for Petro. She would leave for fresh country air as they suggested but a change of sights would not cure her broken love. She refused to believe her youth, love and tears had been wasted. Şura and Seyit always found a way back to each other.

* * * 

The avalanche of hurtful words Emine was throwing towards Seyit, were words coming from a wounded mother.She was constantly worrying about her daughter’s safety and look who betrayed her? Her own mother threw her in the middle of the lion’s den!She was saying anything and everything, she would kill Seyit and everyone here if they pushed her hard enough, she wanted to stop time and stop whatever hurt her daughter was feeling.

She would never forgive Seyit Eminof and she would never forgive herself for marrying off her own daughter to heart break. 

As he pulls her daughter away from her, she wants to cry and scream, if her pride permitted she would beg him to return her. He won’t harm her, he is her husband they say. Is everyone crazy? She thinks, he already has harmed her.He harmed her the day he spoke about marriage with someone else in his heart.

* * * 

The tears forming in Mürvet’s eyes risk falling but they do not. She will not cry in front of anyone. She returned to those survival instincts she had learned when she took refuge in strange lands. _Pretend, pretend, pretend_. Do not_ feel_, do not disclose your feelings. She could do it then yet as she was being congratulated by everyone, she could not bare meet their eyes. Their eyes looked at her with pity, she could handle everything except pity. She took everyone’s blessing and wished to be out of there. She retracted back into her mind, how would her heroines solve this? She retracted so deeply into her mind to avoid hearing her mother’s outbursts and Seyit’s poor attempts at defending himself.

She was no stranger to suffering, but this kind of suffering was new. It starting with the painful sharp in the middle of her heart and spread slowly throughout her entire soul. It was increasingly painful and promising to end her life before it began, it was promising to be ever-lasting. It was unlike any other pain she had ever felt, she feared her survival instincts were not prepared for this type of pain. She wanted to reach into her chest and yank out her heart, the part of her that was spreading pain to the rest of her body.

As Seyit pulled at her arm and pulled her out the hotel, she wanted to run in the opposite direction but she knew the rules too well, she knew she could bring endless grief to her mother if she did, she knew what was expected of her.She knew a little too much about what was considered right and very little about wrong. 

She wanted to hear something from him, already knowing that everything he would try to say would be wrong.

She lets him know just how foolish they have been. She believed they couldhave found love but she had been fooled by those pathetic dreams. He said she was the girl whom he was promising his life to, but they only managed to cage themselves in. His love promised her freedom to be herself, gave her wings, but her wings would break from hitting the sides of this cage.

They would be imprisoned by his past, by their wedding day and night, by doubt. He would imprison her in a marriage with three people in it. He wished it not, he liked to think the past was done with you the moment you were done with it. Today had dismantled this belief. 

_“Even now she is in your eyes…”_

_“Mürvet..”_ he whispered lightly, he wanted her to know and understand his mind, he did not do this because he was a cruel man, he did not do this to hurt more people. He did it to live, he wanted a life, alife with her. He did it to find a part he lost a long ago in her. He did it selfishly perhaps, maybe that is why he was finding it hard to give into her reasoning, because he could not afford to give her any leniency or courage to leave.

As he walked out, past her door, she wished she could do the same. She could only look at the mess he had left behind, even if she wanted to leave this house she could not, her wings were flapping against these walls.

* * *

Celil suspected that Seyit regretted his choices. Anyone would suspect it so, here was a groom not with his bride. A groom wishing to be alone on his wedding night.

However Seyit decided that he would regret very little in his life, he only saved that sour feeling for the way he failed to save his family. Beyond that he allocated very little time for regret and focused only on solutions. He did not regret marrying Mürvet, he did regret and hated how their ceremony fell apart. What Seyit felt was anger. Anger at himself, he had thought about his wedding day thoroughly but there was a step he missed on his way to ensure nothing like this would happen. Did he need to run his plans through Şura first? He was angry that he managed to hurt everyone around him with great efficacy and in such a short time. He was angry that Şura did not speak to him before she decided to interrupt his ceremony. But had he spoken to her? He was angry at himself for that too. He felt it had been too late for explanations between them two. There were things that were better left unsaid between them because at this point all the words they spoke only served to hurt them more. No words could render what was gone. There were no words she could speak that would dissuade him from the path he had chosen, there were no words he wanted to speak in order to explain to her why he was finally separating their paths from one another. He dared to take her by her word, her final goodbye, but he only managed to leave three wounded. How many times did they need to say goodbye to one another for the other to believe it? This is not sane, that was not a life he wanted to dive back into. 

Their love had been lost in their silence. He knew the moment it would end but he failed to communicate that to her. He failed to let her know how important she had been and he failed to let her know that they needed to forget one another. Peace and happiness, he felt, would evade him for the rest of his life.

He had a beautiful wife at home; a bride alone on her wedding night, he was so miserable he could not even drink. He had lost to his endless silence before, he knew he locked himself in his mind and he knew to be distant from everyone even those closest to him. But not this time, he would not allow a lack of communication to win this time, he was already planning his battle tactic. He would be ready for combat.As Celil put it, he was fighting again. He was fighting _for_ someone again, not _with_ someone. He was once again fighting for a cause. He would go into battle with his words, he would explain to her his intentions and he would profusely apologize. He would explain what had led to that disastrous wedding day, in the future, not now when their pain was so fresh.He already had a flower in mind, a flower with a fragrance that reminded him of her. Tonight though, he could not face her. Maybe out of shame or maybe because some part of him had tired of the endless battles in his life and to engage again, he needed to rest.So he sat with Celil for a while and then sat alone.

He needed to feel this shame for he knew he hurt both women who mattered to him. He had wanted a swift, quick, and clean break from Şura. He wanted no more hope for the two of them and he thought he had made that message clear.He wanteda fresh start with someone new, someone who he did not have degrees of separation with. Someone who did not remind him of the violent past. Someone who did not resurrect his angry father every time she was close. He realized then, that maybe throughout his entire relationship with Şura he had been the one living in the past. He was holding on to his father’s dead corpse with one arm, while holding on to Şura with the other. He saw his father’s words as an obstacle they both had to cross, but maybe he was the only one who had to cross that obstacle. The only one who had made his father's words an obstacle, an obstacle he proved incapable of getting past.He never recovered from such a harsh and unexpected loss.A loss that viciously tore his entire family from this world, in cold blood.Slain bodies that meant his survival. Şura did not need to recover from that bloody sight, she proved strong and was able to navigate the uncertainty of her family's fate better than he and as she did, she had always supported him.It was him all along and only him who feverishly remembered his ghosts. One might say he even held on to them, with white tight knuckles he never let go of his family. He had put the blame on Şura and on his father,he thought his heart never failed her but his heart, soul and mind rebelled against her. If that was love, he had not loved her as she deserved, she was always hanging at the end of his every whim. His father was not here nor his ghost, the voice he heard was of his own guilt. He had not been big enough to protect Şura and his family, he had wanted to split in half in order to do so. He failed to see that when he buried his mother and father he buried a part of him and lost the other part to grief. An echo of the same grief he saw in another child who buried her sister and father. He buried his childhood but had not let it go. She had buried her childhood but had not lost her child-like wonder. His failings to his loved ones were his and his only and out of his own creation. He only hoped he had more time to repair what was now happening at home.

He knew what would await him at home. Emine would not forgive him, why would she? He barely forgave himself. The life-long marriage he had envisioned would be impossible with Emine walking on his heels. She would never let him forget his wedding day, in turn never letting Murka forget either. They would be stuck reliving this day for the rest of their lives, whatever hope he had that she would love him would disappear. Murka would only hate him. 

They held such promise, he had thought. A little faith and a little promise would carry him on, would carry the nation on, would help the lost find themselves and would help this bloodied soil heal. Why her and not someone else? Not only because she was beautiful but because he knew she could understand him if he only had the time to explain. She had the mind of a poet and who was more attuned to empathy and tragedy than poets?She had the vocabulary to describe great atrocity yet the same vocabulary to cure homesickness and end the tears of both young and old. She had the power to restore after destruction. Because he had felt her soft hands, managing his fever, checking his wounds, because he would always return home with a new wound or a new scar, and when he did he needed to feel needed. Because he deemed her his blooming flower in spring, blooming with a new life. Because he felt a lightness being around her, as if his bones were not heavy with his guilt and pain, as if he was being lifted by another love beginning again but he had failed to see what was catching up to him and what was threatening to burn it all down.

* * *

It was his turn to be the silent observer. He returned home to find Mürvet cold to any and every part of him. If she had shyly avoided him in the past, she was now openly rejecting any glance of his. She would turn from him, as soon as he stepped close and she eyed him with suspicion. For her part, at every opportunity Emine would smite him with her words, her insults were so clever, he caught himself smiling briefly at her retorts before returning to his stoic expression. He did not want to appear childish or for his smile to appear as a mockery, as if last night had been a joke to him.He wanted to look how he felt, saddened but prepared to face whatever tests they were going to throw his way.

He had brought a bottle of liquor to celebrate his wedding. As he prepared a toast he looked at her but she robbed him of any opportunity to speak out loud, because just as quickly as he met her eyes she looked down. If he could have said it out loud, he would have toasted to a long marriage, he would have toasted to a lifetime of looking into her eyes, to her. Instead, in his mind he toasted to her, to his victory in this battle for her affection.

Mürvet was experiencing conflicting emotions, some that came with her circumstances and others that arrived as a result of AyŞe’s words. She was afraid of him, of how he did not seem to know how deeply he had wounded her. She was afraid of their wedding night, it was still pending and she was afraid he would use her and discard her, like AyŞe had said.Seyit was grateful for the moment alone, he had planned for their conversation, he did not want to discuss their wedding day, there would be time for that, he wanted to put her at ease, to talk about good things, he did not plan for the way she was ready to dismiss him.

She would not be his plaything, she would not be someone to be taken advantage of, she would grant her trust only if he earned it.Seyit never planned for the way she shocked him, she was not entertaining his wedding gifts, nor his attempts to move the conversation somewhere more pleasant. She was angry and upset but he could not help notice the little things that made him feel like he was on the right path with her. 

The happiness that she unknowingly gave him after saying his name for the first time. The beginning of many firsts that they would have together. He liked the way his name sounded when she said it, he liked the shape her lips formed around his name. 

The way she described what she wanted her life to be was so close to what he wanted his life to be.Where life and time pass slowly, feeling every moment not to remember some pain but to thoroughly enjoy the life they were being granted. A life shining brightly underneath breezy summer skies. A life full of trust, a life of peace and plenty of happiness. He figured then that he had come prepared with the wrong weapons. He did not need to bring flowers or jewelry, he need not speak beautiful words, he needed to give her his love and emotions, he might feel ready to do so, but she was not ready to believe him. How could she? She told him to his face she could see the remembrance of another love, another love that had so cruelly ended not even a day ago.He realized what they needed was something he could not bring to the table right now. He was not able to master time and what she needed time. Time to think, time to heal, time to process her pain without him interrupting her and opening up her wounded heart every day. They needed time to bandage their wounds and then, only then, come together with an open mind.

He knew he was risking being misinterpreted by leaving yet again in the middle of the night. He wished she would understand why he was leaving and why he could not stay when she was afraid of him. He did not want her to be upset with him on their wedding night. He would not have their marriage culminated on the basis of sadness and rancor. He wrote to her and only to her, so that she would understand the meaning behind his actions, he was not leaving her, he was going to fight for their future. Even if fighting for that future meant distance between them, meant separation.

Out there, in the middle of nowhere, he would write letters to her he would never send. Instead he opted on updating Lüftü on their cause, Lüftü in return, updating him about his home. He wanted to give her time to miss him because as the hours turned to days and weeks to months, he began wondering more and more about her, a wonder that did not let him sleep comfortably. A wonder he suspected was turning into longing.

Out there, in the wooded forests, blanketed by the moonless night, he saw her face in the fire. She was slowly branding herself in his heart. Unexpectedly growing in feeling inside him, just as unexpectedly as she had arrived to his life.He hoped that he would return to open arms. Out there, in the middle of nowhere he had fallen out of love but was falling in love.This new country promised him new beginnings. As the men he was training spoke about their sweethearts back home and kept their letters close, looked anguished by their longing, he hoped his wife was beginning to feel as he was.

But his distance felt worlds away, his silence was deadly and the days for his wife were painful hours she had to endure, only to find oblivion in sleep for a few hours and restart the nightmare all over again.

* * *

The days for Mürvet felt eternal, she never had the luxury to feel that waybefore, having lived for her entire life fearing that her days were limited. As the days passed by, even if they passed slowly, she knew her days as a married woman were numbered.She had wished early on that he would return sooner rather than later, but he hadn’t. She had wished to be able to understand him but she only felt like a weight he carried around, dead weight from a promise he had to fulfill to her mother. She knew that his silence meant he was regretting this marriage. She would not be anyone’s regret so she resolved to give him a way out. Give herself freedom from a love, give him freedom from a contract, that was shackling them both.

She, ever patient had waited longer than a decade to find her loved ones. She would wait another for her husband. But her and Seyit were not a husband and wife, they were perfect strangers. She did not know him and he did not know her. In her heart she knew he was the only person for her, she resolved to keep that love hidden from sight, maybe he felt right to her, but she had met him at the wrong time. Maybe another life would grant them another love. She knew that in this life, they had jumped into too big of a commitment. It was clear there was no room for her in his life or heart. He had no love in his heart to give to her. Her survival instincts kicked in, they told her that to free herself from any further damage she needed to terminate this marriage. Her survival instincts kicked in and they screamed to take flight, he needed to be as far from her as possible. Without a marriage between them he could go anywhere, she would only need to see him once for the divorce trial and she was prepared to do so.

As Seyit read her words, read how she wanted him to return to sign the divorce papers, his mind was scrambling to find a solution. He had not worked so hard, trained so hard, lived on grainy memories of her, to lose her.She was right they were perfect strangers but there was no one he wanted to be closer to, to know him and know completely, other than his wife. She had referred to their marriage as a **_“problem”_ **and was granting him his freedom, but he did not want to be free, least of all from this **_“problem.”_**


	10. The Choice

The Choice

Ayşe had kept count of how many days Seyit had been gone. He had been gone for thirty days. Thirty days in which Mürvet lived as before. Ayşe observed her as she woke up at the crack of dawn, drew the fire in the kitchen, went to fetch water and cleaned every inch of her home. When her mother returned from the market she would offer her tea and make small talk, no sign of sorrow on her face. When she could Mürvet would return to her room and come down stairs only to prepare dinner. She would play with her food, taking small bites to avoid being reprimanded for not eating by Emine. She would be the first to start cleaning the table, the first in the kitchen washing dishes, Ayşe suspected that in these short moments when she was alone she showed her grief. She was resilient but she wasn’t made out of steel. Any person would be hurt if they had been left by their spouse two days into their marriage

_ **Naivety** _

Mürvet did not need to examine what went wrong with Seyit, for she knew and Ayşe always reminded her. He yearned for another and every time she looked him in his eyes she was sure she would see another love.She had to determine where she went wrong to never again find herself hurting herself and others. She determined it was making him the protagonist of her stories, it was staying up at night wishing upon a star for his love. It was believing Ayşe when she said that woman was just a woman in his company, it was believing he could love her, it was naivety.

She had been naive enough to believe her own fairytales, she had been naive enough to trust her hope, and now she was going to learn the hard way not to believe her own mind.He dearest baba came to her mind every time she sat alone in her room, he used to sleep with Mürvet on his left side and Mehire on his right. Usually Mehire fell asleep first, Mürvet would stay awake, her eyes wide as if waiting to detect any moving figures in the dark. Baba would tell her he could see different worlds in her eyes, for she was an old soul with a young heart. She now understood what he meant, she was naive enough to believe, to love someone who did not love her, but she was wise enough to learn and to find a solution out of her pain.

No mistake is irreparable, her mother had told her. So she would start the healing now. As she wrote to Seyit she asked him to return so that they could both find their freedom. A divorce would be the best solution to all of this pain, shame and guilt.She chose her words carefully, she needed him to know that she did not hate him. She had been willing to go ahead with this marriage, therefore she held herself equally accountable for how this had imploded. She only needed him to return as quickly as possible to ensure freedom.

* * *

** _Distrust_ **

Mürvet did not mistrust him because she had no trust to begin with. Ayşe would try to irk her with comments about how Seyit was probably roaming the streets of Anatolia without her. When those comments did not work, she would insinuate Seyit had left with his lover, essentially cheating on Mürvet. However, Mürvet figured he could do as he pleased, he could not cheat on a stranger. That is what they were, two strangers connected by only a promise, one that she had collected the papers necessary to break.

For the first three days she kept rereading his only letter to her, he was leaving for them, to give them time, to fight for their country….

“…_to have a marriage we will first need to have a country…_” he had written words that were soothing to her nerves, that once again planted the seed of hope in her heart. As the days went on the flame dimmed, with only one letter to keep her afloat, her hope began to burn out. 

The rational part of her brain told her that divorce was the only solution, the irrational part of her brain told her to trust the words in his letter, to trust his heart. A heart, unknown to her, it had been so easy to leave her… Did Seyit not realize how hard it was to build trust from a distance?

* * *

_ **Killing** _

He was an expert at taking out the enemy. Gun loaded, aimed, pull the trigger. Turns out Mürvet was also an expert too. Words loaded and sent, drilling holes right in the heart. Her words hurt because he thought that with time her anger would lessen, instead he was killing her slowly. His silence left blank gaps which she filled with her own assumptions of what she imagined Seyit was thinking. She had acted on these wrong assumptions. He did not want a divorce not then and not now when she was finding a home in his heart.

As his horse galloped through wooded areas he scrunched up her letter in his hand. He would not accept defeat, he would not accept her goodbye when she was beginning to live in his dreams. Her last words to him would not be goodbye, not when he dreamed with her voice. His time away was to grant them a new beginning not an end to their relationship, she had to understand this, he could explain it so. He had woken up far from his future, from his bride, for many days now, but from now on when the night filtered through their windows he would wake next to her.He would arrive armed and ready, with his affection and devotion, ready for her. This time she had to believe him whether she was ready or not. He would buy the most beautiful diamond necklace that the finest jeweler in Pera could find and hoped that this time he and his gifts would not be rejected.

“Nice necklace. She’ll love it.”

A voice, he had not heard in months, a sight his eyes could not believe. He had faced Mürvet’s pain after the wedding but he had yet to face Şura’s. He knew the hour and day he ended their story. He did not realize the eulogy to their heart-wrenching story awaited him. It was as if his decision to marry ripped open every wound in his past and his choice to go home to his wife was forcing him to face every crevice of every wound. Here he and Şura faced a love that destiny did not allow to live out. A love that was witnessed by and would tremble under the streets of Pera, but a love they both had to release.

“Do you still love me?”

He had to write out every word of their love’s eulogy. They had been a torrid passionate affair, with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. They had lived in pain, lust, destruction, and with passion. They swam in blood and murky waters. They loved greatly but were desolate. During an eulogy, one tries to preserve a memory and a life. One risks idolizing their lost ones, but his and Sura’s love need not be idolized after death. He would much rather remember it as good love. A love that wholeheartedly took his breath away.

“When I told you that I loved you a hundred times your heart did not believe me. It doubted me. It still doubts me. Now the words leaving my lips, would kill that innocent woman. We’re on different paths now. Goodbye.” 

This was the end to a young love. A love that blossomed as many do without knowing what the future holds. This was the end to a young love to make room for mature loves. It was that first love, the first waves of euphoria that come with walking by your loved one, the echoes of that euphoria he’d feel on a lazy afternoon decades from now.A love that they had failed to preserve and left it to be tested and doubted in the hand of many others. A love that that made him a better man for he had the good fortune to be loved so bravely, so fiercely, by a good woman. It was that goodness in her that he sought to preserve, she belonged to other and better worlds.

As he always knew it would always have to him, it had always been him who left her. He knew that it had to be him to say the final goodbye. For the world she would leave behind, the world he lived in, the stormy torrents wold end the very moment his compatriots emerged victorious, but until then, more agony was sure to come to this land. She need not live in more war.For in this world he would continue to live in, he would do so with the woman he had chosen to marry.It was clear who his actions were choosing as his feet carried him out the jewelry shop.

With Şura a part of his youth was departing, they had gone through all their growing pains together. As the distance between them grew, as their branches grew apart, their roots would always be tied together.As he grew closer to his new home, he felt wiser. He was going back to their start, he was still on time, to prevent any more pain, to reverse the pain he had caused. He had opened a door for her to enter through. He was not falling in love, he was walking towards love, eyes wide open with experience, choosing what streets to take, what steps to take, whose hand to hold.

* * *

_ **A Diamond Necklace.** _

She was a sight for sore eyes, porcelain skin as bright as ever. Eyes shocked as his fingers brushed against her preventing the water tumbler from falling and spilling over her. As he smiled at her he knew his grainy memories had done her no justice. They found themselves once again by the fountain where they first laid eyes on each other.The water in the fountain sprinkled under the sun’s rays much like his wife.She resisted his jokes and walked away as quickly as she could. As he carried the tumblers of water, he hoped that they’d soon be like water. Water does not resist, may one day his wife laugh openly at his jokes and not resist him. He wanted to plunge into water and feel her caress. Water is adaptable, running through rivers, canals, and ocean deep, he would need her to flow with him everywhere he went. A source of life, he’d need to breathe. Water is patient, he would need to be patient, for her heart needed time to open up. When it does, he’d treasure it in his hands. He knew this would not be easy but he knew that they could make it. Because even when one cannot cross obstacles, water does. Water goes through them.

“I want a marriage which will go on forever with love. I want us to be a happy family. We have a long path ahead of us. We’ll get to know eachother while walking on that road. We won’t turn back. We won’t stumble this time. No matter how big or how strong it is… no obstacle can bar us from our path.”

As his finger tips delicately skimmed the skin on her neck, he could sense her nervousness. He never wanted her to be afraid of him so he moved slowly, always meeting her eyes. Tonight, was just for them two. She was going to know him, not just his body, he would speak with his eyes, he would embrace her with his soul. He pushed her hair back, as he did her hair soft like feathers, slid through his fingers. Every single one of his touches held purpose, she need not hid away from him with her hair, she need not lower her eyes away from him. He would love her tenderly, in every way, physically and emotionally.

He kissed every part of her beautiful face, the face he had began to miss, out there in the middle of nowhere. He kissed her gently and slowly as if they had all the time in the world, because he knew they had. He kissed her with curious delight. He kissed her like this was the first time his lips touched another’s. Shyly she ran her hands on his body, over the dents and scars of his heart, painting his heart different colors, colors he could not replace. She touched his skin, skin which she’d write new stories on. Her soul laid pressed against his heart, as he reached out to caress her, she was taking him whole. She was smothering his thoughts, in his heart flowing with affection, entering through one of his senses and overtaking them all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Hope everyone is still enjoying this fic and is safe! After this chapter, there will be two more chapters. Chapter 12 will be the last chapter. Thank you for accompanying me through this. This was my first time writing on here. :) Thank you!


	11. Lemanuchka, 1924

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Hope everyone is safe and healthy! 
> 
> We are nearing the end! This chapter will take us a few years into the future. These next two chapters will not cover something we have seen on the show. I tried to incorporate a little bit of what the characters' personalities were like on the show and also what we saw at the end of the show, with Mürvet, Emine and the rest of the gang working at the hotel.
> 
> I know this is based on people who once lived and I do not claim to know how their life played out. Nor have I read the novels that Seyit's granddaughter wrote. This chapter and the next are fictitious, straight out of my mind and based on the characters we saw on the show. I have attempted to give both Şura and Seyit a happy ending though they are separated. I wish and hope, the people who the characters are based on, found happiness in their lifetime, no matter how short their time may have been on this earth.

Lemanuchka,** 1924**

> **"You cannot save other people, you can only love them." -**Anaïs Nin

They had been a few years into their marriage and the newness of their togetherness had begun to fade. In these early years, they would sit in their room discussing the revolution. She would listen attentively and ask questions. He had tried to spend more time at home, bringing any present he could find for her. She would surprise him by making an embroidery for him or by cooking one of his favorite dishes.

As he was arriving earlier than usual one day, with one white rose, he smelt cooking spices that reminded him of his mother’s kitchen in Alushta. Naturally, he was very curious as to what was happening inside his home. He walked in to a rare sight, Murka with her face contorted into a frown and Emine looking apologetic. He heard Murka’s soft voice rejecting Emine’s apology.

“Dessert will just taste a little different than it did in Alushta. If the ingredient was not in the market there is nothing we can do about it.” Murka smiled at her mother, Emine wringing her hands, mouth agape, at a loss for words. Emine, at a loss for words! Allowing her daughter to be upset for a moment, he must be dreaming!

“Seyit!” Murka, having spotted him, looked at him with confusion, “what are you doing here early?”

“I came to surprise my wife. Look we can go to….”

“We cannot!” Seyit stared at Murka with disbelief, at first she had not known what to make of their trips to the city but she had grown to love them, why was she deciding not to go now? “I have been preparing a surprise for you. I am preparing a dinner, a dish that was your mother’s recipe. It is not ready, we cannot go, dessert will…” Her eyes and voice trailed off to the pots in the kitchen.

Emine stepped out to give them space. He had won Emine over long before her daughter. Emine just wanted her daughter to be respected and loved. He believed she would have accepted anyone who would do so, so marrying him was Murka’s choice all along, learning these small pieces of information allowed him to fall that much easier in sync with Murka. Despite how reluctant she had been, how doubtful she had been about their choices.

He took her by the shoulders. She sighed out loud.

“We could not find the ingredients for dessert.”

“I am far more impressed by how you found my mother’s recipe.” He smiled at her and she smiled back.

“I have my ways.” She would never tell him how she learned the recipe but he could guess that Celil and Güzide had a play in assisting her.

As they retreated to their room, after dinner, their routine had become established. Each would change into their night clothes and they would discuss their respective days. Seyit was in the process of remodeling the laundry to allow for more employees as he was one of the few business still running through the revolution, he wanted to hire as many people as he could afford to.

Murka had been to the laundry only a handful of times, to drop off food for her husband and the workers. He could tell she was warming up to the idea of Pera as most of her visits to the laundry had been made recently. He was thinking of inviting her to see how the work was going. She would arrive at his shop towards the end of the day to see what progress had been made, then they could have dinner in the city and return home together.

* * *

She had never entered the upstairs room of the laundry shop. It had been an unspoken agreement between her mind and heart. Seyit had already spoken to her about his past, about what it meant to him and about what it should not mean for them. She had noticed a lightness in him after avenging his family, a lightness to him after telling her that he would not live with two hearts, but that in his heart, there would be a black spot. A black spot reserved for his past and for his pain and for Şura, she had assumed.

She dared not touch anything. This area had gathered dust, it had not been touched in years. It was as if someone got up and left and never returned. She felt guilty, she had assumed that the furniture by the laundry’s door had been furniture taken from here, she figured that once empty she could enter. She did not want to enter when it still felt like it belonged to someone. She looked at a broken mirror and grew sad for the woman she had only met once. She had appreciated Şura’s sister for her honesty and the kind words she gave her many years ago. People may have wanted them to be adversaries but they had occupied different spaces and lived in what seemed different eras. Seyit never treated her unkindly, but she did not imagine he loved her. She did not dwell on that fact and instead appreciated his companionship and hoped he had the same appreciation for her.

She stood there in the middle of the upstairs room, lost in thought, failing to hear an increasingly frantic husband shouting her name. He had sent the two men helping remove the furniture outside to see if she has out there or in the hotel across the street. She failed to hear the footsteps coming up the stairs, growing closer to her. She turned on her side, saw him and smiled weakly.

“I did not mean to…” She confessed…

“I was worried you had gotten lost.” Seyit told her, breathing a sigh of relief. Murka smiled at him and raised her eyebrows at him.

“I know this city so well thanks to you! If I would have gotten lost it would’ve been because of my poor teacher.” She joked and he let out a chuckle and hugged her.

She breathed in deeply, hid herself behind his shoulder, but found the courage to speak.

“I am sorry, I did not mean to enter, I thought it was empty, I did not touch anything, look…” He pulled away from her and she looked down, playing with her hands.

He eyed her with worry, he was getting flashbacks to their early days, he could see that she would retreat into herself. He thought they were done walking on eggshells, he told her that no matter what, she could always speak her mind. Seek from him what she wanted. He had discussed this with her before, the life he had lived before, some of it in this location. It did not offend him that she was here. He had not been here in years because he need not be. He knew that when she retreated into herself she grew quiet and timid, that the thought of his love vanishing, gnawed at her. She had asked her questions and now he would ask his …

“Why do you think I married you?” She looked up at him expressionless, he moved his head to the side, signaling that he was waiting for a response.

She muttered and then said, “I … I don’t know, companionship?”

He smirked and took a step closer to her…

“Maybe that I wanted to satisfy a hunger…” her eyes grew wide and he walked even closer to her, smirk still in place, “or as you suggest to avoid my loneliness, or because it was expected of me to one day marry…” he could see her gearing up for something bad, he got so close to her, their faces could touch and she stepped away but he held her arm. “I thought you could help me heal. You could bandage me up and we’d live together in perfect …companionship.” She was now looking at everything but him. He took her chin and gently moved her face towards his, so that their eyes may meet.

“I was wrong, I have healed myself. I had to let go of my rancor, my regret and live with the fact that I will not know what could have been of my family, does my brother live or die? Like those that we used to know, he is most likely probably dead. I am the last of the Eminofs, it is hard to recognize that. I would have preferred it if they lived. I would have gladly taken their place if it meant they could breathe again. It was foolish to expect, to want and to place the responsibility on you, to come in and try to heal all that.”

Murka was shaking in his arms, hurt in her eyes, hurt for him. He smiled at her, a gentle smile, he was gently caressing her jawline and neck and he closed his eyes and put his forehead on hers. She was extremely confused but she did not want to move, she wished he could’ve stayed home and lived a different life. A happy one even if it was away from her.

“You’ve done something better. You have taken all my bad habits and merged them with your good habits. You have redeemed me. I thought my heart could not spare any more love, I thought I would have to force out an emotion resembling love, but I was wrong. Do not ever doubt that I care for you. I love you Murka.”She hugged him tightly, knocking the air out of him. He hugged her back laughing loudly at her arms’ strength.

“Let us go home.” As they were leaving the room, the dust from the ground started to fly in the air. This was just like the past, small particles that flew in the air, almost invisible, but present. However, he closed the door to the room, he knew he could breathe air free from those dust particles. His past can be contained and left behind just as he prevented the dust from infiltrating the rest of the laundry shop by keeping it locked behind this door. It might hang overhead as he worked in the laundry shop below, but one’s past is always overhead, looking down on what one has become. It cannot be changed or absolved it must be made peace with. One cannot change the bad nor can one relive the good left in the past. One can take it as is and make sure to hold on to the present while looking forward to the future.

“Soon Murka, we will be managing the hotel.”

“You’re buying it?”

“Investing in it with Uncle Ali.” They walked hand in hand discussing how the hotel could change. She had many ideas, he could use her help, he would run the laundry shop and she the hotel.

“For the sake of business, we should move to our home in Pera.” She said.

* * *

_ **1924** _

Emine suspected Seyit had done something to annoy her daughter, she frowned as she imagined what he could have done. She had to put the knife she was using to cut potatoes down, before she decided to kill Mr. Eminof.It did not help that he was so close to the hotel, his laundry shop was at such close proximity, that she could run out, knife in hand and demand that he make Mürvet speak. As she cleaned her hands on her apron, she frowned again, wondering why Mürvet had grown quiet before everyone, before Seyit, herself, Hakki, Ayse, Binnaz and Uncle Ali. Binnaz who noticed Emine’s pensive state, smiled at her and softly reassured her that all would be well.

As they went about their errands, cleaning and organizing the rooms, Güzide, every now and then, worryingly looked over to Mürvet. She was worried for her health because despite witnessing what she had and noticing when she could, how little Mürvet was eating, she kept her promise of silence to Mürvet. As the days went by though, her conscience was screaming at her to tell Emine or Seyit what she had seen. She excused herself from the room, leaving Mürvet alone. Güzide found Sabri who was watching the front desk for the women, and asked him to fetch Seyit. She instructed the boy to tell Seyit to meet her by the street and not enter the hotel. She did not want to be seen by Mürvet.

Seyit grew proud everytime he saw Sabri, the young dangly boy he met, was growing taller, his features growing more defined day by day. He had been lucky to help raise the boy who idolized him so much, he only hoped to be deserving of such admiration from the young teenager.

“Yes Sabri? Have you come to help me manage the store today?”

“Not today, today Murka requested by assistance the full day, she said the hotel looks best when a young handsome man is at the front desk.” Sabri smiled brightly at Seyit.

Seyit feigned surprise, “A handsome young man? That can’t be you, you’re my wormy.” Seyit moved to tussle Sabri’s hair but the boy moved away…

“You’ll distract me and I have something important to tell you! And Güzide will scold me! She asked me to tell you to meet her by the hotel, but not inside it. Let’s go!”

Before he could ask why, Sabri pulled his arm towards the direction of the hotel. Upon arriving at the street that the hotel was on, he saw Güzide looking around her, he could tell she was worried, had something happened to Celil?

“Güzide, you look pale, you need water…” Seyit said as he gestured towards the hotel, she needed to sit down and drink some water.

“No, no, Seyit.” Güzide replied and looked down at Sabri and ordered him to return back to the hotel and not say a word about where Güzide was. Seyit furrowed his brows, this was serious, had something happened at the hotel?

“Güzide…” He started but was interrupted.

“Seyit, please, I have to tell you something though I promised Mürvet I would not tell anyone anything, but I am worried…” She looked down, taking a deep breathe before continuing, “she is not well, I believe she fainted, a few days ago I found her unconscious, I woke her up but she asked me not to say anything. I’ve been noticing how little she eats despite all the hard work we do at the hotel. Please, Seyit do not tell her I told you, but I am worried for my friend…”

Seyit licked his lips nervously, he had so many questions, but he promised Güzide he would say a word, nevertheless he walked towards the hotel.

He found Mürvet on the parlor, changing the rugs, he eyed her carefully, before stepping into the parlor.

“Murka…”

She looked up smiling, her face red, pieces of her hair framing her face, pieces that fell from her intricate bun due to all the moving around she was doing.

He looked her up and down. She had grown quiet the last few days but he figured that it was because of a certain letter he had received. Though her smile seemed friendly enough, he did not know what to make of the letter nor could he ask his wife not to be upset by it, so he gave her time.

“I wanted to ask, should we have dinner at a restaurant today?”He noticed her frown. Maybe she was still upset? Maybe the letter had caused her stress? Maybe she did not want to have dinner with him because of the letter? He did not know how to ask her if she was feeling alright when it was him who caused her all this grief.

“No, there is no need, we should go home.” She returned to her work.He heard a hard but inimitable tone call his name from behind him. His mother-in-law was calling out to him. Before turning to Emine, he noticed how Murka did not say goodbye or turn around to look at him.

He walked out the parlor and toward the lobby to find Emine and Sabri.

“Mr. Seyit, Mürvet is not speaking to anyone, _**what did you do**_?” Emine did not hide her accusatory tone or glances. He was not about to disclose the letters to her, but he did find this odd. Usually when upset, the only one who received Murka’s silent treatment was to him, not her mother or anyone else. Now she included others in her silence. Perhaps she was sick… he did not want to tell Murka that Güzide told him what she had seen, but one thing was for sure Mürvet needed to see a doctor.

* * *

As the sun was begging to set, he decided to close the shop earlier than usual, he locked the door behind him and stopped a carriage in from of the hotel. The carriage would take him and his wife home, she would find his odd, as they usually enjoyed the walk home, but he did not care if she suspected anything. Tomorrow they would go to the doctor and she could not refuse to go. Murka was caught off guard when he arrived earlier that usual and with a stern face asked that they go home.

She said not a single word but fetched her coat and purse and momentarily paused at the sight of the carriage but got on it.

Throughout the ride Seyit stared her down. He eyed her face, she was not pale, but she was throwing the most unusual glances at him before turning her face away from him completely.

He unlocked the door to their home, she stepped in and disappeared into their room before he could had even closed the door.

“Murka! You will tell me what is wrong! I know you have not been feeling well.” Upon admitting this, she appeared mouth agape, eyes teary, at the door of their room, before closing the door.

She knew this irked him, shutting him out of their room, when he was only expressing concern? He rushed to the door.

“Listen tomorrow we will go to the doctor, I know you fell and were found unconscious by Güzide at the hotel, why didn’t you tell me?”

“We will _not_ go to the doctor.”

“Oh but we will, Murka!” Seyit could not understand how she refused to take care of herself, she still was not facing him, instead she was focused on taking out the pins in her bun, he was being very serious!

“I have already been to the doctor’s.” She informed him and he went and sat by her vanity, where she sat and hid her face behind her hair, like she had done years ago.His mouth went dry. Had she been quiet because she did not want to share terrible news? Was it something that could not be helped? With trembling fingers, he moved her hair and placed it behind her ear and looked at her softly.

“Murka, what is it?” He could not imagine another loss. He could not take another loss.

She turned slightly to him, tears pooling in her eyes.

“I was so nervous to tell you, I am scared that I can’t do it.” At her admittance he took her hands in his and kissed them, already resolving they would be fine, they would go into combat together.

“I hope you can have little more love for us.” She said quietly and he looked confused, searching her face for clues as to what she meant.She took their intertwined hands and pressed them on her abdomen.

He had never felt such a strange sensation. It was as if time had ceased to exist, he could jump in excitement, he could cry joyfultears, he felt awakened, he felt far from any darkness.

Despite her protestations, he went out to buy pastries to celebrate, he prohibited her from lifting a finger. From now on he made her swear that he could accompany her to the doctor’s for every check up, for every appointment, for every single thing. Unbeknownst, to her this ushered a new era for her, she would forever be endlessly spoiled. For his sake, she took a small bite out of the pastries, though she was having a hard time keeping anything down. He slept with her wrapped around his arms. The awkward position made her slightly uncomfortable but entirely loved. One arm around her head, his hand laying on the top of her head.The other arm wrapped around her abdomen, his face tucked between her shoulder and neck. Both slept with wide grins.

* * *

She had been in labor for hours. Seyit’s sweaty palms had dried up, only to begin sweating again. He had run out of ways to stand and sit. The celebratory champagne that Celil risked bringing by, was now gone. The father-to-be was too excited and too nervous. Emine would occasionally stop by to tell Seyit that everything was fine, that he need not worry. She also found time to reprimand both Celil and Seyit for the champagne.

Celil had dosed off on the chair next to his. The father-to-be had long abandoned his jacket and tie, he now sat with his hands linked between his knees. Hair disheveled and eyes red from lack of sleep, he could not think anymore, as sleep was taking ahold of him he was jolted awake by a baby’s cry.

His screams of joys awoke Celil, who joined his friend in laughing and hugged him. To Emine’s great dismay, Seyit rushed through the door, impossible as it may be, his smile grew wider with the sight of his baby and wife. Their small baby was enveloped in his wife’s arms. Murka smiled up at him and angled the baby so he could see her.

“Congratulations Seyit, she is a beautiful baby girl.” Emine smiled at them as she left the family of three alone.

He had always imagined his heart to be defective. A muscle misused. A machine broken over the years, a machine that worked but worked slowly and pained. He failed to see, his heart was a tree. A tree that had been rooted in his chest to give him life, for as long as the heavens deemed it so, and to guide him through his path. The trunk had been formed and settled by his childhood teachings, separate branches had sprouted out to support him throughout his life. He realized it now, as he held his wife and his newborn daughter, that his heart had been temporarily stumped. He had yet to grow a bit more. With Lemanuchka he felt the machinations in his heart regaining consciousness, love growing in places he never thought it could exist, her branching it into existence. His heart was growing, love that he never thought he was capable of, was being born for the first time. Feelings he thought did were a myth, began to be true in his heart. He felt so much he could barely breathe. He had not been defective, a defective being could not help create such a beautiful angel.

Since the war he felt like he had to chase happiness, to believe he was living when he felt like he was done, to look down to ensure every now and then that his feetwere firmly on the ground. His anchor had arrived, he would no longer breathe for himself. He was here now, his daughter reminded him so, every time her strong baby fingers tightened their grip over one of his. You don’t chase happiness, you create it, and here she was, with the sun in her hair and the world in her eyes. Everything began to make sense, he had been brought here, to be blessed, to be her father. He was acting like a child with a new toy, she was his treasure in the ocean. Murka would joke that their daughter would never learn to walk as her early years he would never put her down. He wanted every second of his wife’s and daughter’s time. He wanted to freeze these moments, fearful of time, as it would pass and she’d grow.

Regardless of his fears the spring in his heart blossomed and made it so easy to give into this new happiness.

That night, the night of her birth, despite the large bed, he laid his upper body next to Murka’s shoulder, leaning his arm over her pillow, his legs stretched out towards the floor. He wanted her and their newborn baby to have all the space they deserved.Murka had been in and out of sleep, their daughter laying between them, in her arms. He kept pushing Murka’s hair back, for whenever she moved, it would fall on her face.

“You may never believe me, but you always guided me towards betterment. Just being you, I learned that life could still be beautiful, I didn’t know just how much…”

He smiled down at his wife, the magnificence of this world had been dimmed under all the blood shed, after all the loss his mind and heart had undergone.She’d never believe him and she’d never hear him, because he confessed his secrets as she slept.

“If you ever see me getting lost in the details, if you see that I go around without seeing, touch me. Touch me and bring me back home. Make me return, I will be wondering what I did to deserve this happiness. Touch me. With your touch, with your hands, all my fear disappears.” He made her promise as she was asleep. He knew he need not ask. She had seen right through him.

Despite the uncomfortable sleeping position he had decided on, he drifted into a light sleep. He dreamt of being awarded awards by the Czar for his military work, he dreamt about dazzling ballrooms, despite his memories appearing in his dreams, despite his sleep induced brain, he smiled because he knew he would awake to an even better reality. His mother appeared before him in his dream, jolting him awake, in his younger years he wondered who could stay?

She had seen right through him. She had not healed him, but she loved him. She loved him so thoroughly that she brought happiness to his door and asked him to let them in, with no fear or doubt. She asked him to forgive himself for all the things he did not become, for the lives he could not save, for the hearts he had toyed with as he sought self-destruction. It was time he believed he was worthy of happiness.

“Mother used to tell me that I needed a wife, she feared that I would die a lonely soldier…destroyed by what he could not do in the battlefield. No matter of what the future holds, no matter the army of children we will have…” he laughed as he wished to give his daughter more siblings, though given today’s labor, Murka might disagree, “Murka, you’ve guaranteed with our daughter, with the way you weave me into your stories, with your love, that I will live on forever.” 

If he could he would dive into their skin and live there. For someone so attuned to his tormented thoughts, Murka was just as attuned, as if ready for combat with whatever ran through his mind, she placed a hand over his, shifted herself and Lemanuchka to give Seyit room to lay down. She smiled sleepily, eyes closed, she moved to her side to face Seyit, he did the same, he faced her. She brought her face close to his, her forehead next to his chin, her breaths hitting his chest, and placed their daughter to rest between both of them.

“You’re safe here with us,” she smiled, not opening her eyes. “How do you feel?” She asked.

As always taking care of others, he felt ridiculous being asked this by her, who had been in labor for hours, not to make her unhappy he chose to answer.

“Endless love. _**Infinite**_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This specific chapter may be confusing as we review M & S's marriage. I have chosen to keep their daughter's real birth year, 1924, compared to the show when she is shown in 1923 at the parade with everyone else. 
> 
> This covers the time in the show, after Seyit ends Petro and returns home (I am unsure as to what year that was happening in the show), to Lemanuchka's actual birth year. (Hoping this makes sense!)


	12. Sunset Boulevard, 1958

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ THE NOTE AT THE BEGINNING BEFORE READING THE CHAPTER. OR things might be confusing :D 
> 
> As always thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy this chapter as it was probably one of my favorites to write! (This one is at the top). 
> 
> I really mean it when I say, thank you! I appreciate that other people have enjoyed this work just as much as I have enjoyed writing! <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The FUN I had writing this chapter! 
> 
> In this chapter, we will be revisited by someone from the past. We will fast forward to 1958 which is a long time from 1924. I feared that this chapter would feel out of character for the character it belongs to, but I think as the years move forward, we outgrow certain parts of ourselves, and change to a certain degree. This person in the show has said, "sorrow makes you grow up!" And with that, inevitably there is some change. 
> 
> Therefore this chapter will be a little different! This chapter will feature a new setting for us, the USA. With that I have included many new terms and celebrities that were popular during this time in America (1930s and 1958) at the end of the chapter I have included notes on who they were/what the terms mean. This chapter also features a new character. 
> 
> This person existed in real life but all that I have written is purely fictional, purely from my imagination, I do not pretend to know how this person was or how they looked like. All that this character shares with their real life counterpart is their name. I have nothing but respect for the actual people who lived. 
> 
> DISCLOSURE: Again, this work is pure fiction! I did not read the novels that Seyit's granddaughter wrote. This chapter was largely inspired by a newspaper article found in the Los Angeles Times Newspaper from 1958 (Linked at the end). A mother will appear, one that did not survive on the show, in this story we find out she lives.

Sunset Boulevard, **1958 **

> **"Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country."-**Anaïs Nin
> 
> **"Whatever our souls are made out of his and mine are the same..."** -Wuthering Heights

_ **1958 ** _

On the corner of Vine Street (St) and Sunset Boulevard (Blvd) her mother would see a big white building with three letters on it.

N

B

C

Her mother would probably be confused as to what those letters meant and why they were so imposing on the corner of Vine St and Sunset Blvd. Unlike her, when she first saw the building decades ago, she snapped a photo and stared in awe.

* * *

** _ 1930s _ **

Her Aubrey Frederic had wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her across the street.

“I was taking a photo!”

Aubrey, all smiles, his carefully side swept hair, having loosened up in the California breeze, falling on the side of his face.

“**_Sandy._**..” he sighed his nickname for her with love, as he effortlessly pushed his hair back in place with his right hand, as his left arm was still wrapped around her. He looked down at her, pearly white teeth smiling brightly down at her.

“You might want to capture just how majestic this NBC building looks, hovering over us nobodies, imagine what the stars do there?! Do you think we can meet_ Joan Banks_? I bet she is just as pretty as she looks on the paper!” Sandra, as Şura came to be called in the United States of America, glared at him and he laughed wholeheartedly. Now across the street, having walked away from the NBC headquarters building, he turned her, to face it once more. From behind her, he places his hands over hers and brought her camera to eye level. From this angle, you could see the white NBC building, the stores surrounding it, looking so insignificant beside it, she could capture its dominance over everything else.

“Of course not as pretty as you, Sandy, you may not have a voice for radio or the talkies but you have the face of a star!” He jumped out of her way before her hand landed on his shoulder. He loved to joke about her poor English, which had improved but held a delicate Russian accent. Her Aubrey Frederic, she had felt his strange name so odd as it rolled off her tongue, but he made his way into her heart. They met in “his” city, New York City. Having been born and raised there, they started as friends, he took her everywhere. That city felt so strange to anything she saw before, a concrete jungle, so unlike Paris and the cities before Paris...

He would grab her arm jump from one subway to the other that she would get whiplash. After one his “tours” of New York City, she had ventured by herself as he was at work and she was looking to be more independent in this strange city, she got lost. She tried to remember the subway stops, but all she could remember was his goofy smile and fast-paced English. She called him frantic from a shop, from which borough out of the many in the city, who knows? All she knows was that a kind shop owner had lent her his telephone. As Aubrey Frederic entered the shop, taking his hat off to greet her, eyes twinkling, bright side grin, she felt something fragile beginning to take form in her heart.

“Sandra, is it me or did you plan this elaborate hoax to bring me to your side?” Şura softly smiled at him, “you’re lucky you are _Bee’s knees_.” With that American charm, he offered her his hand, to help her from the boxes the shop owner allowed her to sit on, opened the door for her and winked an eye in gratitude at the shop owner. She had found American manners so odd, she found them lacking to be frank, but on Aubrey Frederic she found them endearing. 

Standing back in front of the NBC building he wrapped his arms around her shoulders as she snapped more pictures.

“Maybe if we try to bust in we will end up on _Gangbusters_!” He joked. This was what she liked best, his American optimism. He never ran out of jokes, he always shone his wolfish grin on her, he was always wanting to show her something new. He would come home eager to show her something he had learned, eager to share everything with her. She had found it hard to exhale her past for many years, but with Aubrey Frederic, she remembered she was still young, in between laughs, she had inhaled the present.

It was difficult not to have lust for life when he was around. His energy was young and he sought adventure wherever he went, be it in New York and California. He kept her alive when she felt she had run out of cities to run to. He thrived in the crowded cities and when Sura would feel lost amongst the large swamps of people, he’d promise her, she was the brightest star of the New York sky. In Los Angeles, with the city lights diminishing the night’s stars, he would promise her, her light shone brighter than any city made constellation.

* * *

Back in New York after their honeymoon in California where she saw the NBC building for the first time, where she loved the way the palm trees swayed in that blue cloudless sky, she found herself feeling sad.

She missed the ocean in Istanbul, an ocean breeze that refreshed you. Aubrey had been reading the paper and was eyeing her from the top corner of his paper.

“Sandy, it is home is it not?” He read her as easily as the paper before him. Sometimes she swore he knew her thoughts before they even crossed her mind.She went to sit next to him, she told him about the ocean breeze in Istanbul.

“I tell ya what, we missed Malibu on this trip but we are going back. I always tell my fellow New Yorkers, you haven’t seen the beach, until you see the way the sun ray’s hit the Pacific in Malibu.”

She had traveled to different countries and had not yet found home, she had been told she was searching for something, she knew she had been searching for someone long gone. She had traveled to the point where she did not think she would ever be complete. The end of the world could come crushing down on her and she would still be lost somewhere in the ocean that took her from Pera to Paris. She had attempted to let him dance in the ballroom of her mind, but her feet moved her from place to place, from person to person hoping to find him in the next city.

She feared she would become a nomad, she was dying to feel something real. It may have taken multiple landscapes to find Malibu but when she arrived she felt it.

If the ocean in Istanbul refreshed her, the ocean in Malibu moved the ground she stood on. The sand warmed her from head to toe. The ocean breeze undid her hair, undid whatever thoughts she had of what her life would be. The waves landed loudly on the shore, they shook her ground, they dared her to stay.

She opened her eyes to the vast blue sky and ocean, in this big vast world, she found she was capable of love once more. She was shedding her old self, she was Sandra now, she was Sandy to someone who was very real.

She heard a dog bark and her “Freddy” as she now called Aubrey Frederic, laugh. He was running in zig zag lines as a dog chased him, with his pants rolled up to his ankles, he ran to the shore to findto his endless delight, the dog running after him. His pants wet and wrinkled, his shirt with a few buttons undone, water droplets on his sunglasses, his hair completely disheveled, yet he still ran and laughed. Like a child he dropped to the ground, sand in his hair, as the dog jumped on top of him, licking his face.

“Sandy!” He finally shouted from underneath the dog. “Sandy, it looks like we have a dog! Don’t be mad Sandy! This buddy choose me!”

_Who wouldn’t?_

She dropped the shoes she had been holding on her hand, she had decided that they would be forgotten by the shoreline, and ran towards Freddy and their new dog. Nevermind the wrinkles on her dress, nevermind the sand that was bound to folly her dress and hair, nevermind her aristocratic upbringing that demanded she stop and sit pretty. As she approached, Freddy got up. With a swift movement, without her knowing how, she was tangled in his arms, her legs in between his, he laughed mischievously as he carried her towards the ocean. Both drenched by the ocean waves that crashed into them with their new dog barking in the shoreline.

She thought it would be impossible given what her young eyes had seen and lost to be this carefree again, but here she was, laughing unapologetically with her husband. Her husband with unruly hair, soaked in their clothes, with a chocolate brown golden doodle with nappy hair barking at them.

It took a million miles to arrive in Los Angeles, it took thousands of brush strokes to get their dog’s hair to shine, it took Freddy’s first joke to make her feel unadulterated joy again.

* * *

_ **1958 ** _

Aubrey Frederic knew that her past covered vast lands, it was a rocky landscape with plenty of pitfalls, somewhere far from here,in a world he could not imagine. He would not enter until he was invited in.

It had been 40 years, mother and daughter had not known if they lived or die, but her mother was here, in Los Angeles, California, ready to meet her granddaughter and see her daughter.

He had hugged Sandra as she cried, when she found out her mother was alive and when she found out he had bought a plane ticket from Russia to California.

He waited in the airport parking lot as his wife and daughter went to greet Sandra’s mother.

As he stood by the passenger door of his 1958 Ford Fairlane Town Sedan, ready to open the door for his mother-in-law, he saw a woman otherworldly.

She arrived dressed in all black, a fur hat and a silk dress, with a simple yet elegant pearl necklace. She held her neck high like a swan. She walked out of Los Angeles Airport, with delicacy. Her footsteps so light that she seemed to float. There was an otherness that seemed untouchable, as if she was royalty. She was distinctive, she seemed to walk out of the history books, a royal born woman from Russia, one that the commies had tried to erase.

She handed him a firm hand and a polite smile as he opened the door. She sat, back straight like a rod, with her hands perched on top of her clutch, which she placed on her lap. Once in the car, Şura, as his mother-in-law called his wife, introduced him.

He smiled his boyish grin. He was nervous, this was the first glimpse he had gotten into Sandra’s past. He knew she had lost plenty back home and she was well breed so to speak, but he did not realize she had been so close to the top. He scratched his head, as he found it ironic, he descended from rebels who overthrew a king, here he wed a princess.

The places he had wanted to show his mother-in-law would not impress her, the drive down Sunset Blvd, with the hoards of people and the traffic had completely drained her. He was rarely ever nervous, but his mother-in-law made him fear he paled in comparison of “Şura’s” past.

Once in their living room, his mother-in-law turned her face to him and began speaking in Russian.

“She wants to tell you something, she wants me to translate.” Sandy informed him. He sat upward in his chair and leaned forward, he placed his elbows on his knees, he nodded his face to say yes. He then placed his chin on top of his hands, Sandra smiled shyly at him. She knew this pose was indicating that they had his undivided attention.

Her mother started to speak and Sandra grew pale, Aubrey did everything in his power not to panic, he hoped that what she was saying was not something that would upset his wife.When she finished speaking he turned to Sandy to wait for her translation, she cleared her throat and started…

“My daughter Şura, has always been my most precious daughter. For a long time, I had to live as if she was gone, as if she laid dead somewhere far from me. I resented her for not having listened to me, she left with people I did not trust. I know for a fact she suffered. She offered her heart and trust to people I would not let her speak with one minute alone otherwise… she did everything I wanted her not to do. I loved her and the last time I saw her, she was walking away from me. She would never know how much I grieved for her…”

Sandy was now tearing up. He grabbed her hand and nodded “yes” again, as if reassuring her that all would be fine. Her mother began talking again, she translated word for word.

“I had a whole life planned for her, but the war you see took us to unexpected places. I would have never chosen this for her.” At those last words Sandy, gripped his fingers tighter, he smiled kindly at her and turned back to his mother-in law. “She had been so reckless with others that I mistook this care-free nature that I saw in the picture she sent of you, to be just as dangerous. Yet what I see here, is joy, patience and love. My granddaughter an independent young woman, only a man of true confidence could have raised her to be so and could have pieced my Şura back together.”

“I did not have to piece her back together ma’am,” replied Aubrey, pausing for Sandy to translate, “she only needed a little inspiration to be at peace again. You see, I would have waited a lifetime for her, if our souls are ever reborn again, mine will go searching for her. She might be confused again in that lifetime, she might have met others then too, we might have different faces, live worlds apart again, but I would find her. If she lost herself, I would help her find herself. And if you are separated then, I would also find you, and bring you to where we are.”

She had always been a woman of many words. She had so many words to describe her past, she had uttered and written many words to a man she had deemed her world. Her world when she was young and her forever lost world. But this man, with his foreign name in her tongue, Aubrey Frederic, left her speechless.

That night he hid a note under her pillow, he had yet come to bed, the note explained why. He was waiting for her outside. He leaned against his 1958 Ford Fairlane Sedan, his back to her. They had gotten older, yet he seemed filled with vigor and care-free. He turned halfway and saw her, he put out his cigarette and grinned his boyish grin at her. It melted her and made her feel twenty six again. He ran towards to her, grabbed her arm and whispered, “we are going to Malibu.”

Without the traffic from Los Angeles to Malibu was a short drive, at this hour they would be deemed crazy to go to the beach but she had learned to love and yearn for his spontaneity.

They sat for a while in silence, hearing the ocean waves crash on the sand. He was dimly lit by his cigarette, he turned to her.

“I may not know everyone or know about everyone who was lucky enough to know you. It does not matter to me. I understand now just how differently we grew up, how different we are…” at this he chuckled and Sandra ran her hand from his cheek to his jawline. “Yet I am convinced that our hearts and souls are made out of the same thing.”

With a few words he transported her back to their early years. She thought she would forever live with a yearning. That her life would be spent imagining “what-ifs” of a life unfinished in distant Pera. That she would live with two hearts, one withered, turned coal black out of loss and bitterness. The other barely beating, barely keeping her alive. But as she stared at the moon, the same moon that looks down on Seyit, she realized that the moment Aubrey Frederic began to enter her thoughts many decades ago, Seyit began to leave them. He began to cement his place in the past, as Aubrey Frederic ran with her through the streets of New York. Sights she never imagined she would see, feelings she never thought she would experience again, a skin she had shed, to live with one heart. Her life to her mother, to all who knew her may seem ordinary given all she had risked chasing what she thought was extraordinary, but to think she could have missed all this joy if she had continued chasing made her feel ill.

Aubrey Frederic, Sunset Blvd, and her daughter were unexpected gifts. But as she realized the moment a young man in 1929, in New York City, who offered her “moonshine” at the height of Prohibition, Aubrey Frederic was the epitome of unexpected and the reason she went out of the black and into the blue.

She had been the prey, wondered who could ever love her after such disillusionment, but he saw right through her and past her.

“Trust me Alexandra, Şura, Sandra, Sandy…” he held her chin up to face him and hovered his lips over her, “a woman with that many names, with a face for the talkies, who made it to the paper today with that LA Times story, will always be a star.” He pressed his lips against ever so gently, like a brush of a feather. He continued talking against her lips…

“Just wait and see, they’ll write stories about you, Marilyn Monroe will play you in a movie about your life. And as your loyal husband, I will play your husband on film too and kiss Miss Monroe for the sake of consistency.”

There she laughed that unhindered full laugh of her girlhood, before the war, before everything, before everyone. Aubrey Frederic, loved that sight, he took her in his arms and they stared at the ocean and the night sky.

It took different cities, it took a million miles, it took what seemed like a lifetime, but this night she had her own beach. She was finally fine. Limbs tangled with her husband’s, she forgot the miles traveled, the hardships endured, she allowed herself only to feel. Whoever she had been, whatever she had to endure brought her here, she would love those in her past for bringing her to today. To sit on this empty beach with her husband.

She only wished for more time, more time to be like this. As he pulled her closer, trust her husband to grant her wishes, held closely like this, she felt _**infinite**_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The link will take you to a clip of the Los Angeles Times article that discusses Sandra/Sura meeting up with her mother. Also the link to the website where I learned the name of Sura's husband. 
> 
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/8744417/shura-alexandra-de-vergensky/
> 
> https://www.geni.com/people/Alexandra-Sandra-Nash/6000000078038161248
> 
> The great fun in writing this story is that per the article, Sura, arrived in the USA in 1929. In my story that is when she meets her husband. I tried to incorporate what was happening in that time on the story. I mentioned, "Prohibition," the Prohibition Era was a time (1920-1933) when all alcohol (the sale, importation, transportation, etc.) was banned nationwide. Of course, people still drank, they made "moonshine" alcohol that was made and sold illegally at that time. 
> 
> I mention the NBC building throughout the story, in the 1930s, NBC (a television network in the USA at present time) had a hit radio show called, GANGBUSTERS, that Aubrey mentions. He wants to break in to see if that can be on the show, as the radio show was about famous criminals and how they were caught. 
> 
> JOAN BANKS, who he mentions too, voiced characters on the GANGBUSTERS radio show. 
> 
> Aubrey has many American sayings that belong to that time below is a mini glossary (I study history and just had to include them!): 
> 
> Talkies: movies with sound. In the time during 1926-1930 silent films transitioned to sound, with a soundtrack or music at first, eventually to dialogue. He makes the comment of her voice because many actors that had success during silent films, due to their accent began to fade when Talkies became mainstream. 
> 
> Bee's Knees: outstanding person 
> 
> commies: communists, not the friendliest term but the US was not the friendliest with Russia in 1958 (Cold War, anyone?) 
> 
> Marilyn Monroe: a popular and widely known American actress who became very popular in the 1950s until her death in 1962.


End file.
